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i 

CURIOSITIES 



OP 



LONDON LIFE: 



OE, 



PHASES, PHYSIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL, OP THE 

GREAT METROPOLIS. 



BY 

CHARLES MANBY SMITH, 

it 

ATTTHOE OF "THE WOEETNG MAn's WAY IN" THE WOEXD." 



> 



SECOND THOUSAND. 



W. AND F. G, CASH, 5, BISHOPSGATE WITHOUT. 

1857. 



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3) A 62 

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TRANSFER 

2 
N 0V 20 1943 

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v 







PBEFACE. 



It has been my custom for many years past to regard 
the Streets of London as an open book, in which he 
that runs to and fro may read as he goes along, gather- 
ing not merely amusement and excitement, but valuable 
instruction too, from its ever varying pages. From 
time to time, as the opportunity of leisure has been 
afforded me, I have, often in the intervals of severe 
toil, jotted down the results of such observations as I 
was enabled to make, and transmitted them through 
the post to the editors of various periodicals, who, for 
reasons best known to themselves, have encouraged 
me, far more liberally than I either anticipated or 
deserved, to continue the practice. These contri- 
butions to the serial literature of the day have, in the 
course of the last six or seven years, grown by degrees 
to a considerable bulk; and, moved by the favour 
which some of them have met with, and by the flatter- 
ing reception which has been accorded to a volume of 
personal memoirs, I am encouraged to test still further 
the goodnature of the Public. 



VI PREFACE. 

In the " Working-Man's Way in the World" I had 
to draw upon my own experience for materials ; and I 
cut short my tale when that experience no longer 
afforded matter which could be considered interesting" 
to the general reader. But in the following papers I 
have had the experience of others to deal with, — so 
far j that is, as it was patent to observation — and the 
task of recording it has been one of more pleasure and 
less difficulty. The ways of men in London present 
an inexhaustible subject for the sketcher, whether he 
work with the pencil or the pen. The field is so large 
— the variety so great — there is so much of the pictu- 
resque in form, and of the characteristic and suggestive 
in manners, habits, and modes of life, that that groat- 
less individual, the " man of observation," need never 
be at a loss for an object or a subject upon which to 
exercise his speculative tendencies, or his descriptive 
talent — if he have any. In assuming this character 
myself, and while indulging in the pleasure of deli- 
neating such humble phases of our social and artificial 
condition as the reader will find in the following pages, 
I have kept two things constantly in view. In the 
first place, I have cautiously refrained from knowingly 
overstepping the limits of fact — because, whatever 
merits a work professedly descriptive of human life 
and conduct may possess, it cannot lack fidelity and be 
of any real value. In the second place, I have endea- 
voured, however trivial the topics, to clothe each one 






PREFACE. Vll 

in something resembling at least a literary garb. It is 
true there was no other necessity for this than the 
necessity, perhaps, of my own vanity or capricious 
fancy — but which was so far imperative, that had I 
not written in this way, I should not have written at 
all. The reader may, however, rely upon the truth of 
the details he will here peruse. The only fictions are 
those harmless and transparent ones in which the writer 
has chosen sometimes, for obvious reasons, to involve 
both himself and some designations of persons and 
places which it would not have been prudent to call by 
their real names. The several characters on his canvas 
are all studies from the life, and the back-grounds in 
which they figure may be verified at any hour by the 
dweller in London. In some few cases, where per- 
sonal narratives are given, they are in substance the 
actual experience of the personages to whom they are 
attributed — with the exception of one or two, the 
living prototypes of which only supplied a general 
outline, which it was left to imagination to fill up. 

With regard to one of these characters, the " Blind 
Fiddler," whose history, recorded in his own words., 
will be found at page 80, I may be allowed in this 
place to return my acknowledgments to those unknown 
but benevolent friends who, instigated by the publica- 
tion of his story in " Chambers's Journal," forwarded 
to me the means of ameliorating in some degree the 



Vlll PREFACE. 

hard conditions of his lot. It is a pleasant task to 
return thanks for unsolicited kindness to an unfortu- 
nate stranger ; and there is no valid reason why I 
should not couple it with another pleasure — that of 
returning my compliments to a coterie of "respectable" 
rascals who promised to break my head for exposing 
the villany of the " Knock-Out." 

Having thus briefly discharged my obligations to 
friends and foes, nothing remains but to commend my 
book to the kind courtesies of the gentle reader, and 
" still more gentle purchaser " into whose hands it may 
chance to fall. 

Islington, Oct. 1853. 



CONTENTS. 



MUSIC GEINDEES OF THE METEOPOLIS 

Hand Organists 

The Monkey Organist 

The H an db arrow Organist 

The Handcart Organist 

The Horse-and-cart Organists 

Blind Bird- Organists 

Piano Grinders 

Flageolet Organists and Pianists 

Hurdy-gurdy Players 

Cripple Grinders 

STEUGGLES FOE LZFE 

The Duck- weed Hawker 
Green Food for Singing Birds 
The Mushroom Hunter 
The Garret-master 
The Label-printer 

LONDON CEOSSING SWEEPEES 

The Professional Sweeper 

The Morning Sweeper 

The Occasional Sweeper 

The Lucus-a-non 

The Sunday Sweeper 

Deformed, Maimed, and Cripple Sweepers 

Female Sweepers 

SAM SCNDEIES AND HIS CONGENEES 
THE UMBEELXA PEDLEE . 



PAGE 
1 

3 
5 

6 
7 
10 
11 
12 
15 
ib* 
17 

19 
20 
22 
24 
30 
37 

43 
45 

47 
49 
52 
53 
54 
55 

58 

69 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

THE BLIND FIDDLER 80 

THE NEWSBOY'S DAY 90 

THE WATERMAN 103 

AN EXTINGUISHER . 107 

BOB, THE MARKET GROOM 112 

THE BELLSTICKER . 117 

THE BEREAVED TROMBONE 124 

THE CITY TOLLMAN 130 

AN HONEST PENNY . . ' . . . . . . 135 

The Irish Machine ib. 

Running Porters • 138 

The Donkey Commissariat 141 

Female Independence . . ... . . . 144 

CURIOSITIES OF ROGUERY ........ 148 

The Free Forester 149 

The Horse-maker ........ 155 

The Dog-maker 159 

The Dog-stealer . 160 

The Drink Doctor 164 

The Pawner 169 

Auction Gangs 172 

The "Established Business" Swindle .... 179 

THE TIDE-WAITRESS . . . . ■, . . . 187 

BUTTERCUPS IN LONDON 192 

THE STREET STATIONER 196 

WHAT HAS BECOME OF THE PIEMAN? ..... 201 

BLIGHTED FLOWERS 210 

THE DEPLORABLE DODGE 217 

A HALF-PENNYWORTH OF NAVIGATION 222 

A PENNYWORTH OF LOCOMOTION 227 

THE OBSTINATE SHOP • 234 

COMPLAINT OF A STRANGE CHARACTER 243 

LONDON SUNDAY TRADING 250 

THE GRAND ARMY . . . 259 

THE "RIG" SALE 267 



CONTENTS. 



XI 



PUFF AND PUSH .... 

BUBBLE COMPANIES .... 
WILD SPORTS OF THE EAST 
UNFASHIONABLE CLUBS 
CHEISTMAS (1851) IN THE METROPOLIS 

OUR TERRACE 

THE CHARITABLE CHUMS' BENEFIT CLUB 
HOW LONDON GROWS 

THE CITY INQUEST FOR THE POOR . 
A FROST PIECE IN ST. JAMES'S PARK 
A DESERTED VILLAGE IN LONDON 



PAGE 

277 

287 
299 
310 
319 
335 
349 
360 
373 
385 
394 



"I will take you where you will see what London is made of." — Game of Life. 



CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 



"We are going to lift the curtain, and present to the gaze of 
the Public many a varied scene in the strange drama of 
London life and experience. As all dramatic representations 
are preceded by a musical performance, and an audience 
looks for that as naturally as for any other part of the bill of 
fare, it is plain that we cannot do better than to call upon 
the members of our company to perform their own overture, 
preparatory to the entrance upon the stage of the several 
actors, who are summoned to play their parts for the general 
amusement and edification. Though some of our musicians 
are veritable curiosities in themselves, we have no other 
reason for giving them the precedence on the present occasion, 
than such as are suggested by the proprieties of the drama, — 
"Ting — ting; — ting" — the bell rings for the overture. It 
must be played by the 

HUSIC-GRIKDERS OF THE METROPOLIS. 



Perhaps the plcasantest of all the outdoor accessories of a 
London life, are the strains of fugitive music which one hears 
in the quiet bye-streets or suburban highways — strains born 
of the skill of some of our wandering artists, who, with flute, 

B 



2 CURIOSITIES OP LOXDO^ LIFE. 

violin, harp, or brazen tube of various shape and designation, 
make the brick- walls of the busy city responsive with the 
echoes of harmony. Many a time and oft have we lingered, 
entranced by the witchery of some street Orpheus, forgetful, 
not merely of all the troubles of existence, but of existence 
itself, until the strain had ceased, and silence aroused us to 
the matter-of-fact world of business. One blind fiddler, we 
know him well, with face upturned toward the sky, has stood 
a public benefactor any day these twenty years, and we know 
not how much longer, to receive the substantial homage of 
the music-loving million : but that he is scarcely old enough, 
he might have been the identical Oxford- street Orpheus of 
Wordsworth : — 

" His station is there ; and he works on the crowd; 
He sways them with harmony merry and loud ; 
He fills with his power all their hearts to the brim ; 
Was aught ever heard like his fiddle and him?" 

Decidedly not — there is nothing to match it; and so thinks 
"the one-pennied boy" who spares him his one penny, and 
deems it well bestowed. Then there are the harpers, with 
their smooth French-horn-breathing and piccolo -piping com- 
rades, who at the soothing hour of twilight affect the tranquil 
and retired paved courts or snug enclosures, far from the 
roar and rumble of chariot- wheels, where, clustered round 
with lads and lasses released from the toils of the day, they 
dispense romance and sentiment, and harmonious cadences, 
in exchange for copper compliments and the well-merited 
applause of fit audiences, though few. Again; there are the 
valorous brass-bands of the young Germans, who blow such 
spirit-stirring appeals from their travel- worn and battered 
tubes — to say nothing of the thousand performers of solos and 
duets, who, wherever there is the chance of a moment's 
hearing, are ready to attempt their seductions upon our ears 
to the prejudice of our pockets. All these we must pass over 
with this brief mention upon the present occasion ; our busi- 



THE MTTSIC-G BINDERS. 3 

ness being with, their numerous antitheses and would-be 
rivals — the incarnate nuisances who fill the air with discor- 
dant and fragmentary mutilations and distortions of heaven- 
born melody, to the distraction of educated ears and the 
perversion of the popular taste. 

" Music by handle/ ' as it has been facetiously termed, 
forms our present subject. This kind of harmony, which is 
not too often deserving of the name, still constitutes, notwith- 
standing the large amount of indisputable talent which 
derives its support from the gratuitous contributions of the 
public, by far the larger proportion of the peripatetic min- 
strelsy of the metropolis. It would appear that these grinders 
of music, with some few exceptions which we shall notice as we 
proceed, are distinguished from their praiseworthy exemplars, 
the musicians, by one remarkable, and to them perhaps very 
comfortable, characteristic. Like the exquisite Charles Lamb 
— if his curious confession were not a literary myth, — they 
have ears, but no ear, though they would hardly be brought 
to acknowledge the fact so candidly as he did. They may be 
divided, so far as our observation goes, into the following 
classes: — 1. Hand- organists ; 2. Monkey-organists; 3. Hand- 
barrow- organists ; 4. Handcart-organists ; 5. Horse- and- cart- 
organists; 6. Blind bird-organists ; 7. Piano -grinders ; 8. Fla- 
geolet-organists and pianists; 9. Hurdy-gurdy players. 

1. The hand- organist is most frequently a Frenchman of 
the departments, nearly always a foreigner. If his instrument 
be good for anything, and he have a talent for forming a con- 
nection, he will be found to have his regular rounds, and may 
be met with any hour in the week, at the same spot he occu- 
pied at that hour on the week previous. But a man so 
circumstanced is at the head of the vagabond profession, the 
major part of whom wander at their own sweet will wherever 
chance may guide. The hand- organ which they lug about 
varies in value from £10 to £150 — at least, this last-named 
sum was the cost of a first-rate instrument thirty years ago, 

B 2 



4 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

such, as were borne about by the street-organists of Bath and 
Cheltenham, and the fashionable watering-places, and the 
grinders of the West End of London, at that period, when 
musical talent was much less common than it is now. "We 
have seen a contract for repairs to one of these instruments, 
including a new stop and new barrels, amounting to the 
liberal sum of £75 : it belonged to a man who had grown so 
impudent in prosperity, as to incur the penalty of seven years' 
banishment from the town in which he turned his handle, for 
the offence of thrashing a young nobleman, who stood between 
him and his auditors too near for his sense of dignity. Since 
the invention of the metal reed, however, which, under 
various modifications and combinations, supplies the sole utter- 
ance of the harmonicon, celestina, seraphina, eolophon, accor- 
dion, concertina, &c, &c, and which does away with the 
necessity for pipes, the street hand- organ has assumed a differ- 
ent and infinitely worse character. Some of them yet remain 
what the old Puritans called " boxes of whistles" — that is, 
they are all pipes; but many of them might with equal pro- 
priety be called " boxes of Jews' harps," being all reeds, or 
rather vibrating metal tongues — and more still are of a mixed 
character, having pipes for the upper notes, and metal reeds 
for the bass. The effect is a succession of sudden hoarse brays 
as an accompaniment to a soft melody, suggesting the idea of 
a duet between Titania and Bottom. But this is far from the 
worst of it. The profession of hand-organist having of late 
years miserably declined, being in fact, at present, the next 
grade above mendicancy, the element of cheapness has, per 
force, been studied in the manufacture of the instrument. 
The barrels of some are so villanously pricked, that the time 
is altogether broken, the ear is assailed with a minim in the 
place of a quaver, and vice versa ; and occasionally, as a matter 
of convenience, a bar is left out, or even one is repeated, in utter 
disregard of suffering humanity. But, what is worse still, 
these metal reeds, which are the most untunable things in the 



THE MUSIC-GRINDERS. 5 

whole range of sound-producing material, are constantly, from 
contact with fog and moisture, getting out of order ; and howl 
dolorously as they will, in token of their ailments, their half- 
starved guardian, who will grind half an hour for a penny, cannot 
afford to medicate their pains, even if he is aware of them, 
which, judging from his placid composure, during the most 
infamous combination of discords, is very much to be 
questioned.* 

2. The monkey- organist is generally a native of Switzer- 
land or the Tyrol. He carries a worn-out, doctored, and 
flannel- swathed instrument, under the weight of which, being 
but a youth, or very rarely an adult, he staggers slowly along, 
with outstretched back and bended knees. On the top of his old 
organ sits a monkey, or sometimes a marmoset, to whose queer 
face and queerer tricks he trusts for compensating the de- 
fective quality of his music. He dresses his shivering brute 
in a red jacket and a cloth cap ; and, when he can, he teaches 
him to grind the organ, to the music of which he will himself 
dance wearily. He wears an everlasting smile upon his coun- 
tenance, indicative of humour, natural, and not assumed fcr 
the occasion ; and though he invariably unites the profession 
of a beggar with that of monkey-master and musician, he has 
evidently no faith in a melancholy face, and does not think it 
absolutely necessary to make you thoroughly miserable in 
order to excite your charity. He will leave his monkey 

* Among some of the continental nations, Justice, though blind, is 
not supposed to be deaf; she has; on the contrary, a musical ear, and 
compels the various grinders of harmony to keep their instruments in 
tune, under the penalty of a heavy fine. In some of the German 
cities, the police have summary jurisdiction in offences musical, and 
are empowered to demand a certificate, with which every grinder is 
bound to be furnished, showing the date of the last tuning of his in- 
strument. We are not aware that consecutive fifths are punished by a 
month at the treadmill, but if he perpetrate false harmony, and his 
certificate be run out, he is mulcted in the fine. Sucli a bye-law would 
be a real bonus in London. 



4 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

such, as were borne about by the street-organists of Bath and 
Cheltenham, and the fashionable watering-places, and the 
grinders of the West End of London, at that period, when 
musical talent was much less common than it is now. We 
have seen a contract for repairs to one of these instruments, 
including a new stop and new barrels, amounting to the 
liberal sum of £75 : it belonged to a man who had grown so 
impudent in prosperity, as to incur the penalty of seven years' 
banishment from the town in which he turned his handle, for 
the offence of thrashing a young nobleman, who stood between 
him and his auditors too near for his sense of dignity. Since 
the invention of the metal reed, however, which, under 
various modifications and combinations, supplies the sole utter- 
ance of the harmonicon, celestina, seraphina, eolophon, accor- 
dion, concertina, &c, &c, and which does away with the 
necessity for pipes, the street hand- organ has assumed a differ- 
ent and infinitely worse character. Some of them yet remain 
what the old Puritans called " boxes of whistles" — that is, 
they are all pipes; but many of them might with equal pro- 
priety be called " boxes of Jews' harps/ ' being all reeds, or 
rather vibrating metal tongues — and more still are of a mixed 
character, having pipes for the upper notes, and metal reeds 
for the bass. The effect is a succession of sudden hoarse brays 
as an accompaniment to a soft melody, suggesting the idea of 
a duet between Titania and Bottom. But this is far from the 
worst of it. The profession of hand-organist having of late 
years miserably declined, being in fact, at present, the next 
grade above mendicancy, the element of cheapness has, per 
force, been studied in the manufacture of the instrument. 
The barrels of some are so villanously pricked, that the time 
is altogether broken, the ear is assailed with a minim in the 
place of a quaver, and vice versa ; and occasionally, as a matter 
of convenience, a bar is left out, or even one is repeated, in utter 
disregard of suffering humanity. But, what is worse still, 
these metal reeds, which are the most untunable things in the 



THE MUSIC-GRINDERS. 5 

whole range of sound-producing material, are constantly, from 
contact with fog and moisture, getting out of order ; and howl 
dolorously as they will, in token of their ailments, their half- 
starved guardian, who will grind half an hour for a penny, cannot 
afford to medicate their pains, even if he is aware of them, 
which, judging from his placid composure, during the most 
infamous combination of discords, is very much to be 
questioned.* 

2. The monkey- organist is generally a native of Switzer- 
land or the Tyrol. He carries a worn-out, doctored, and 
flannel- swathed instrument, under the weight of which, being 
but a youth, or very rarely an adult, he staggers slowly along, 
with outstretched back and bended knees. On the top of his old 
organ sits a monkey, or sometimes a marmoset, to whose queer 
face and queerer tricks he trusts for compensating the de- 
fective quality of his music. He dresses his shivering brute 
in a red jacket and a cloth cap; and, when he can, he teaches 
him to grind the organ, to the music of which he will himself 
dance wearily. He wears an everlasting smile upon his coun- 
tenance, indicative of humour, natural, and not assumed fcr 
the occasion ; and though he invariably unites the profession 
of a beggar with that of monkey-master and musician, he has 
evidently no faith in a melancholy face, and does not think it 
absolutely necessary to make you thoroughly miserable in 
order to excite your charity. He will leave his monkey 

* Among some of the continental nations, Justice, though blind, is 
not supposed to be deaf; she has; on the contrary, a musical ear, and 
compels the various grinders of harmony to keep their instruments in 
tune, under the penalty of a heavy fine. In some of the German 
cities, the police have summary jurisdiction in offences musical, and 
are empowered to demand a certificate, with which every grinder is 
bound to be furnished, showing the date of the last tuning of his in- 
strument. We are not aware that consecutive fifths are punished by a 
month at the treadmill, but if he perpetrate false harmony, and his 
certificate be run out, he is mulcted in the fine. Such a bye-law would 
be a real bonus in London. 



6 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

grinding away on a door-step, and follow you with a grinning 
face, for a hundred yards or more, singing in a kind of recita- 
tive, " Date qualche cosa, signor ! per amordiDio, eccellenza, 
date qualche cosa ! ' If you comply with his request, his 
voluble thanks are too rapid for your comprehension ; and if 
you refuse, he laughs merrily in your face as he turns away to 
rejoin his friend and coadjutor. He is a favourite subject 
with the young artists about town, especially if he is very 
good-looking, or, better still, excessively ugly ; and he picks 
up many a shilling for sitting, standing, or sprawling on the 
ground, as a model in the studio. It sometimes happens that 
he has no organ, his monkey being his only stock in trade. 
"When the monkey dies — and one sees by their melancholy 
comicalities, and cautious and painful grimaces, that the poor 
brutes are destined to a short time of it — he takes up with 
white mice, or, lacking these, constructs a dancing- doll, 
which, with the aid of a short plank with an upright at one 
end, to which is attached a cord, passing through the body of 
the doll, and fastened to his right leg, he keeps constantly on 
the jig, to the music of a tuneless tin whistle, bought for a 
penny, and a very primitive parchment tabor, manufactured 
by himself. These shifts he resorts to in the hope of retain- 
ing his independence and personal freedom — failing to succeed 
in which, he is driven, as a last resource, to the comfortless 
drudgery of piano- grinding, which we shall have to notice 
in its turn. 

3. The handbarrow-organist is not uncommonly some lazy 
Irishman, if he be not a sickly Savoyard, who has mounted 
his organ upon a handbarrow of light and somewhat peculiar 
construction, for the sake of facilitating the task of locomo- 
tion. Prom the nature of his equipage, he is not given to 
grinding so perpetually as his heavily-burdened brethren. He 
cannot of course grind, as they occasionally do, as he travels 
along, so he pursues a different system of tactics. He walks 
leisurely along the quiet ways, turning his eyes constantly to 



THE MUSIC-GltlNDEBS. 7 

the right and left, on the look-out for a promising opening. 
The sight of a group of children at a parlour- window brings 
hirn into your front garden, where he establishes his instru- 
ment with all the deliberation of a proprietor of the premises. 
He is pretty sure to begin his performance in the middle of a 
tune, with a hiccoughing kind of sound, as though the pipes 
were gasping for breath. He puts a sudden period to his 
questionable harmony the very instant he gets his penny, 
haying a notion, which is tolerably correct, that you pay him 
for his silence and not for his sounds. In spite of his discor- 
dant gurglings and squealings, he is welcomed by the nursery- 
maids and their infant tribes of little sturdy rogues in 
petticoats, who nock eagerly round him, and purchase the 
luxury of a half-penny grind, which they perform con amove, 
seated on the top of his machine. If, when your front gar- 
den is thus invaded, you insist upon his decamping without a 
fee, he shows his estimate of the peace and quietness you 
desiderate by his unwillingness to retire, which, however, he 
at length consents to do, though not without a muttered re- 
monstrance, delivered with the air of an injured man. He 
generally contrives to house himself as night draws on, in 
some dingy tap -room appertaining to the lowest class of Tom- 
and- Jerry shops, where, for a few coppers and "a few beer," he 
will ring all the changes on his instrument twenty times over, 
until he and his admiring auditors are ejected at midnight by 
the police-fearing landlord. 

4. The handcart-organists are a race of a very different and 
more enterprising character, and of much more lofty and 
varied pretensions. They generally travel in firms of two, 
three, or even four partners, drawing the cart by turns. Their 
equipage consists of an organ of very complicated construc- 
tion, containing, besides a deal of very marvellous machinery 
within its entrails, a collection of bells, drums, triangles, 
gongs, and cymbals, in addition to the usual quantity of pipes 
and metal- reeds that go to make up the travelling organ. 



8 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

The music they play is of a species which it is not very easy 
to describe, as it is not once in a hundred times that a stran- 
ger can detect the melody through the clash and clangor of 
the gross amount of brass, steel, and bell-metal put in vibra- 
tion by the machinery. This, however, is of very little 
consequence, as it is not the music in particular which forms 
the principal attraction : if it serve to call a crowd together, 
that is sufficient for their purpose ; and it is for this reason, 
we imagine, that the effect of the whole is contrived to 
resemble, as it very closely does, the hum and jangle of 
Greenwich Fair when heard of an Easter Monday from the 
summit of the Observatory Hill. No, the main attraction 
is essentially dramatic. In front of the great chest of hetero- 
geneous sounds there is a stage about five or six feet in width, 
four in height, and perhaps eighteen inches or two feet in depth. 
Upon this are a variety of figures, about fourteen inches long, 
gorgeously arrayed in crimson, purple, emerald-green, blue, and 
orange draperies, and loaded with gold and tinsel, and spark- 
ling stones and spangles, all doubled in splendour by the re- 
flection of a mirror in the background. The figures, set in 
motion by the same machinery which grinds the incompre- 
hensible overture, perform a drama equally incomprehensible. 
At the left-hand corner is Daniel in the lion's den, the lion 
opening his mouth in six- eight time, and an angel with out- 
spread wings, but securely transfixed through the loins by a 
revolving brass pivot, shutting it again to the same lively 
movement. To the right of Daniel is the Grand Turk, seated 
in his divan, and brandishing a dagger over a prostrate slave, 
who only ventures to rise when the dagger is withdrawn. 
Next to him is Nebuchadnezzar on all fours, eating painted 
grass, with a huge gold crown on his head, which he bobs for 
a bite every other bar. In the right-hand corner is a sort of 
cavern, the abode of some supernatural and mysterious being 
of the fiend or vampire school, who gives an occasional fitful 
start, and turns an ominous-looking green-glass eye out upon 



THE MUSIC-GRINDERS. 9 

the spectators. All these are in the background. In the 
front of the stage stands Napoleon, wearing a long sword and 
a cocked hat, and the conventional grey smalls — his hand of 
course stuck in his breast. At his right are Tippoo Saib and 
his sons, and at his left, Queen Yictoria and Prince Albert. 
After a score or so of bars, the measure of the music suddenly 
alters — Daniel's guardian angel flies off — the prophet and the 
lion lie down to sleep together — the Grand Turk sinks into the 
arms of the death-doomed slave — Nebuchadnezzar falls pros- 
trate on the ground, and the fiend in the gloomy cavern whips 
suddenly round and glares with his green eye, as if watching 
for a spring upon the front row of actors, who have now taken 
up their cue and commenced their performance. Napoleon, 
Tippoo Saib, and Queen Yictoria dance a three-handed reel, 
to the admiration of Prince Albert and a group of lords and 
ladies in waiting, who nod their heads approvingly — when 
br'r'r! crack ! at a tremendous crash of gongs and grumbling 
of bass- notes, the fiend in the corner rushes forth from his lair 
with a portentous howl. Away, neck or nothing, flies Napo- 
leon, and Tippoo scampers after him, followed by the terrified 
attendants ; but lo ! at the precise nick of time, Queen Yic- 
toria draws a long sword from beneath her stays, while up 
jumps the devouring beast from the den of the prophet, and 
like a true British lion — as he doubtless was all the while — 
flies at the throat of the fiend, straight as an arrow to its 
mark. Then follows a roar of applause from the discrimi- 
nating spectators, amidst which the curtain falls, and, with an 
extra flourish of music, the collection of copper coin com- 
mences. This is always a favourite spectacle with the mul- 
titude, who never bother themselves about such trifles as 
anachronisms and unities ; and the only difficulty the mana- 
gers have to overcome in order to insure a remunerative 
exhibition is, that of finding a quiet locality, which shall yet 
be sufficiently frequented to insure them an audience. There 
are equipages of this description of very various pretensions 

B 3 



10 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

and perfection, bnt they all combine the allurements of music 
and the drama in a greater or less degree. 

5. The horse-and-cart- organists are a race of enterprising 
speculators, who, relying on the popular penchant for music, 
have undertaken to supply the demand by wholesale. It is 
impossible by mere description to impart an adequate idea of 
the truly appalling and tremendous character of their per- 
formances. Their machines are some of them vast structures, 
which, mounted upon stout wheels, and drawn by a couple of 
serviceable horses, might be mistaken for wild beast vans. 
They are crammed choke-full with every known mechani- 
cal contrivance for the production of ear-stunniiig noises. 
"Wherever they burst forth into utterance, the whole parish is 
instantly admonished of their whereabouts, and, with the 
natural instinct of John Bull for a row — no matter how it 
originates — forth rushes the crowd to enjoy the dissonance. 
The piercing notes of a score of shrill fifes, the squall of as 
many clarions, the hoarse bray of a legion of tin trumpets, the 
angry and fitful snort of a brigade of rugged bassoons, the 
unintermitting rattle of a dozen or more deafening drums, the 
clang of bells firing in peals, the boom of gongs, with the 
sepulchral roar of some unknown contrivance for bass, so deep 
that you might almost count the vibrations of each note — 
these are a few of the components of the horse-and-cart- organ, 
the sum-total of which it is impossible to add up. Compared 
to the vicinity of a first-rater in full blow, the inside of a 
menagerie at feeding- time would be a paradise of tranquillity 
and repose. The rattle and rumble of carts and carriages, 
which drive the professors and possessors of milder music to 
the side-streets and suburbs, sink into insignificance when 
these cataracts of uproar begin to peal forth; and their owners 
would have no occasion to seek an appropriate spot for their 
volcanic eruptions, were it not that the police, watchful against 
accident, have warned them from the principal thoroughfares, 
where serious consequences have already ensued through the 



THE MUSIC- GEINDEKS. 11 

panic occasioned to horses from the continuous explosion of 
such unwonted sounds. In fact, an honourable member of the 
Commons' House of Parliament made a motion in the House, 
not long ago, for the immediate prohibition of these monster 
nuisances, and quoted several cases of alarm and danger to 
life of which they had been the originating cause. These 
formidable erections are for the most part the property and 
handiwork of the men who travel with them, and who must 
levy a pretty heavy contribution on the public to defray their 
expenses. They perform entire overtures and long concerted 
pieces, being furnished with spiral barrels, and might proba- 
bly produce a tolerable effect at the distance of a mile or so — 
at least we never heard one yet without incontinently wishing 
it a mile off. By a piece of particular ill- fortune, we came 
one day upon one undergoing the ceremony of tuning, on a 
piece of waste-ground at the back of Coldbath Prison, The 
deplorable wail of those tortured pipes and reeds, and the 
short savage grunt of the bass mystery, haunted us, a per- 
petual day-and-night-mare, for a month. We could not help 
noticing, however, that the jauntily-dressed fellow, whose 
fingers were covered with showy rings, and ears hung with 
long drops, who performed the operation, managed it with 
consummate skill, and with an ear for that sort of music most 
marvellously discriminating. 

6. Blind bird-organists. Though most blind persons either 
naturally possess or soon acquire an ear for music, there are 
yet numbers who, from the want of it, or from some other 
cause, never make any proficiency as performers on an instru- 
ment. Blindness, too, is often accompanied with some other 
disability, which disqualifies its victims for learning such 
trades as they might otherwise be taught. Hence many, 
rather than remain in the workhouse, take to grinding music 
in the streets. Here we are struck with one remarkable fact: 
the Irishman, the Frenchman, the Italian, or the Savoyard, 
at least so soon as he is a man, and able to lug it about, is 



12 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

provided with an instrument with which he can make a noise 
in the world, and prefer his clamorous claim for a recompense; 
while the poor blind Englishman has nothing bnt a diminu- 
tive box of dilapidated whistles, which you may pass fifty 
times without hearing it, let him grind as hard as he will. 
It is generally nothing more than an old worn-out bird organ, 
in all likelihood charitably bestowed by some compassionate 
Poll Sweedlepipes, who has already used it up in the educa- 
tion of his bullfinches. The reason, we opine, must be that 
the major part, if not the whole, of the peripatetic instru- 
ments of the metropolis are the property of speculators, 
who let them out on hire, and that the blind man, not be- 
ing considered an eligible customer, is precluded from the 
advantage of their use. However this may be, the poor blind 
grinder is almost invariably found furnished as we have de- 
scribed him, jammed up in some cranny or corner in a third- 
rate locality, where, having opened or taken off the top of his 
box, that the curious spectator may behold the mystery of his 
too quiet music — the revolving barrel, the sobbing bellows, 
and the twelve leaden and ten wooden pipes — he turns his 
monotonous handle throughout the live-long day, in the all 
but vain appeal for the commiseration of his fellows. This is 
really a melancholy spectacle, and one which we would gladly 
miss altogether in our casual rounds. 

7. The piano-grinders are by far the most numerous of the 
handle-turning fraternity. The instrument they carry about 
with them is familiar to the dwellers in most of the towns in 
England. It is a miniature cabinet-piano, without the keys 
or finger-board, and is played by similar mechanical means to 
that which gives utterance to the hand-organ ; but of course 
it requires no bellows. There is one thing to be said in favour 
of these instruments — they do not make much noise, and con- 
sequently are no very great nuisance individually. The worst 
thing against them is the fact, that they are never in tune, 
and therefore never worth the hearing. After grinding for 



THE MUSIC- GKRIXDEKS. 13 

twelve or fourteen hours a day for four or five years, they 
heeome perfect abominations ; and luckless is the fate of the 
poor little stranger condemned to perpetual companionship 
with a villanous machine, whose every tone is the cause of 
offence to those whose charity he must awaken into exercise, 
or go without a meal. These instruments are known to be 
the property of certain extensive proprietors in the city, some of 
whom have hundreds of them grinding daily in every quarter 
of the town. Some few are let out on hire — the best at a shil- 
ling a day ; the old worn-out ones as low as two or three 
pence; but the great majority of them are ground by young 
Italians shipped to this country for the special purpose by 
the owners of the instruments. These descendants of the 
ancient Eomans figure in Britain in a very different plight 
from that of their renowned ancestors. They may be en- 
countered in troops sallying forth from the filthy purlieus of 
Leather Lane, at about nine or ten in the morning, each with 
his awkward burden strapped to his back, and supporting his 
steps with a stout staff, which also serves to support the in- 
strument when playing. Each one has his appointed beat, 
and he is bound to bring home a certain prescribed sum to en- 
title him to a share in the hot supper prepared for the evening 
meal. We have more than once, when startled by the sound 
of the everlasting piano within an hour of midnight, ques- 
tioned the belated grinder, and invariably received for answer, 
that he had not yet been able to collect the sum required of 
him. Still there can be no doubt that some of them contrive 
to save money ; inasmuch as we occasionally see an active 
fellow set up on his own account, and furnished with an instru- 
ment immensely superior to those of his less prosperous com- 
patriots. So great is the number of these wandering Italian 
pianists, that their condition has attracted the attention of 
their more wealthy countrymen, who, in conjunction with a 
party of benevolent English gentlemen, have set on foot an 
association for the express purpose of imparting instruction 



14 CT7EI0SITIES OF LONBQH LIFE. 

to poor Italians of all grades, of whom the vagabond musicians 
form the largest section. 

It is easy to recognise the rule adopted in the distribution 
of the instruments among the grinders : the stoutest fellow, 
or he who can take the best care of it, gets the best piano ; 
while the shattered and rickety machine goes to the urchin 
of ten or twelve, who can scarcely drag it a hundred yards 
without resting. It is to be supposed that the instruments 
are all rated according to their quality. There is at this 
moment wandering about the streets of London a singular and 
pitiable object, whose wretched lot must be known to hundreds of 
thousands, and who affords in his own person good evidence of 
the strictness of the rule above alluded to, as well as of the rigour 
with which the trade is carried on. We refer to a ragged, 
shirtless, and harmlessly insane Italian lad, who, under the 
guardianship of one of the piano -mongers, is driven forth daily 
into the streets, carrying a blackened and gutted old piano - 
case, in which two strings only of the original scale remain 
unbroken. The poor unwashed innocent transports himself as 
quickly as possible to the genteelest neighbourhood he can find, 
and with all the enthusiasm of a Jullien, commences his mono- 
tonous grind. Three turns of the handle, and the all but defunct 
instrument ejaculates "tink;" six more inaudible turns, and 
then the responding string answers "tank." "Tink — tank" is 
the sum- total of his performance, to any defects in which he is 
as insensible as a blind man is to colour. As a matter of course, 
he gets ill-treated, mobbed, pushed about, and upset by the 
blackguard scamps about town; and were it not for the police, 
who have rescued him times without number from the hands 
of his persecutors, he would long ere now have been reduced 
to as complete a ruin as his instrument". In one respect he 
is indeed already worse off than the dilapidated piano : he is 
dumb as well as silly, and can only utter one sound — a cry of 
alarm of singular intensity; this cry forms the climax of 
pleasure to the wretches who dog his steps, and this, unmoved 



THE MUSIC-GRINDERS. 15 

by his silent tears and woful looks, they goad him to shriek 
forth for their express gratification. We have stumbled upon 
him at near eleven o'clock at night, grinding away with all 
his might in a storm of wind and rain, perfectly unconscious 
of either, and evidently delighted at his unusual freedom from 
interruption. 

8. Flageolet- organists and pianists. It is a pleasure to 
award praise where praise is due, and it may be accorded to 
this class of grinders, who are, to our minds, the elite of 
the profession. We stated above that some of the piano- 
grinders contrive, notwithstanding their difficult position, to 
save money and set up for themselves. It is inevitable that 
the faculty of music must be innate with some of these wan- 
dering pianists, and it is but natural that these should succeed 
the best, and be the first to improve their condition. The in- 
strument which combines the flageolet- stop with the piano is 
generally found in the possession of young fellows who, by 
dint of a persevering and savage economy, have saved suffi- 
cient funds to procure it. Indeed, in common hands, it would 
be of less use than the commonest instrument, because it re- 
quires frequent — more than daily — tuning, and would there- 
fore be of no advantage to a man with no ear. Unless the 
strings were in strict unison with the pipes, the discordance 
would be unbearable ; and as this in the open air can hardly 
be the case for many hours together, they have to be rectified 
many times in the course of a week. As might be reasonably 
supposed, these instruments are comparatively few. When 
set to slow melodies, the flageolet taking the air, and the piano 
a well-arranged accompaniment, the effect is really charming, 
and there is little reason to doubt, is found as profitable to the 
producer as it is pleasing to the hearer. They are to be met 
with chiefly at the West End of the town, and on summer 
evenings beneath the lawyers' windows in the neighbourhood 
of some of the Inns of Court. 

9. The hurdy-gurdy player. We have placed this genius 



16 CTTKIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

last, because, though essentially a most horrid grinder he too, 
is, in some sort, a performer. In London there may be said 
to be two classes of them — little hopping, skipping, jump- 
ing, reeling, Savoyard or Swiss urchins, who dance and 
sing, and grind and play, doing, like Caesar, four things at 
once, and whom you expect every moment to see rolling on 
the pavement, but who contrive, like so many kittens, to pitch 
on their feet at last, notwithstanding all their antics — and men 
with sallow complexions, large dark eyes, and silver ear-rings, 
who stand erect and tranquil, and confer a dignity, not to say 
a grace, even upon the performance of the hurdy-gurdy. The 
boys for the most part do not play any regular tune, having 
but few keys to their instruments, often not even a complete 
octave. The better instruments of the adult performers have 
a scale of an octave and a half, and sometimes two octaves, 
and they perform melodies and even harmonies with some- 
thing like precision, and with an effect which, to give it its 
due praise, supplies a very tolerable caricature of the Scotch 
bagpipes. These gentry are not much in favour either with 
the genuine lovers of music or the lovers of quiet, and they 
know the fact perfectly well. They hang about the crowded 
haunts of the common people, and find their harvest in a* 
vulgar jollification, or an extempore "hop" at the door of a 
suburban public house on a summer night. There are a 
few old- women performers on this hybrid machine, one of 
whom is familiar to the public through the dissemination of 
her vera effigies in Mr. Mayhew's "London Labour and London 

Poor." 

The above are all the grinders which observation has enabled 
us to identify as capable of classification. The reader may, if 
he likes, suppose them to be the metropolitan representatives 
of the Nine Muses — and that, in fact, in some sort they are, 
seein^ that they are the embodiments to a certain extent of 
the musical tastes of a section at least of the inhabitants of 
London; though, if we are asked which is ITelpomene ? which 



THE MUSIC-GEINDEES 17 

is Thalia? &c, &c, we must adopt the reply of the showman 
to the child who asked which was the lion and which was the 
dog, and received for answer, a Whichever you like, my little 
dear." 

With respect to all these grinders, one thing is remarkable : 
they are all, with the exception of a small savour of Irishmen, 
foreigners. Scarcely one Englishman, not one Scot, will be 
found among the whole tribe ; and this fact is as welcome to 
us as it is singular, because it speaks volumes in favour of the 
national propensity, of which we have reason to be proud, to 
be ever doing something, producing something, applying labour 
to its legitimate purpose, and not turning another man's handle 
to grind the wind. Yet there is, alas ! a scattered and cha- 
racteristic tribe of vagabond English music-grinders, and to 
these we must turn a moment's attention ere we finally close 
the list. "We must call them, for we know no more appro- 
priate name, cripple-grinders. It is impossible to carry one's 
explorations very far through the various districts of London 
without coming upon one or more samples of this unfortunate 
tribe. Commerce maims and mutilates her victims as effectu- 
ally as war, though not in equal numbers ; and men and lads 
without arms, or without legs, or without either, and men 
doubled up and distorted, and blasted blind and hideous with 
gunpowder, who have yet had the misfortune to escape death, 
are left without limbs or eyesight, often with shattered intel- 
lects, to fight the battle of life at fearful odds. Had they been 
reduced to a like miserable condition while engaged in killing 
their fellow- creatures on the field of battle or on the deck of 
carnage, a grateful country would have housed them in a 
palace, and abundantly supplied their every want ; but they 
were merely employed in procuring the necessaries of life for 
their fellows in the mine or the factory, and as nobody owes 
them any gratitude for that, they must do what they can. 
And behold what they do : they descend, being fit for nothing 



18 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LITE. 

else, to the level of the foreign music-grinder, and, mounted 
on a kind of bed-carriage, are drawn about the streets of 
London by their wives or children, being furnished with a 
blatant hand- organ of last century's manufacture, whose ear- 
torturing growl draws the attention of the public to their 
woful plight, they extort that charity which would else fail 
to find them out. If there be something gratifying in the 
fact, that this is the only class of Britons who follow such an 
inglorious profession, there is nothing very flattering in the 
consideration, that even these are compelled to it by inexorable 
necessity. 



19 



STRUGGLES FOE LIFE. 



A:\ioxg- two millions of inhabitants congregated within the 
space of a few square miles, there must exist a large class 
with whom the struggle for existence is a constant warfare 
with adversity and difficulties of every "kind. Hence it fol- 
lows that we are occasionally struck by the ingenuity displayed 
in the various expedients to which the very poor have recourse 
to procure the means of living — expedients which would never 
be practised but under the stimulus of a constant and pressing 
necessity; and which would be of no avail, if they were, 
under any other social conditions than those which an over- 
crowded metropolis exclusively presents. Of the myriad 
causes of poverty which drive men to avail themselves of any 
and every resource which offers itself to gain a livelihood, it 
were of little use to speculate. Multitudes with industrious 
hands and willing hearts, are either standing idle in the market- 
place, or doing what no man enjoined them to do, in the hope 
of winning even a bare crust to satisfy the wants of the hour. 
Many are from time to time thrown out of employment by 
new inventions and discoveries ; and many more are next to 
destitute from an error in the choice of a profession, and their 
inability to attain proficiency in their craft. These last, after 
numberless attempts and defeats, and many and bitter morti- 
fications, give up the matter in despair, and go to swell the 
ranks of the unemployable and supernumerary class. What 
becomes of all these, and how their wants are supplied, is a 
mystery not easily fathomable. "Ten men, ,, says a German 



20 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

proverb, " cannot tell you how the eleventh lives." The fol- 
lowing brief sketches may contribute in some degree to clear 
up a portion of the mystery. 

THE DUCK- WEED HAWKER. 

Walking one day by the river side, in the neighbourhood of 
Battersea, sketch-book in hand, and meditating a design upon 
the Red House, I was attracted by a picturesque-looking 
figure, busily engaged in raking the surface of a stagnant pool. 
By his side, on the bank, stood an old wine-hamper, reeking 
with muddy ooze. Feeling curious to ascertain what was 
going forward, I approached the operator, and civilly ques- 
tioned him as to his proceeding. The following dialogue may 
give the reader an idea of a branch of industry which I con- 
fess was unknown to me till then. 

"My good fellow, if I may be so bold, what is it you are 
doing ?" 

" Oh, bless your honour ! no harm. I only vants the duck- 
veed you see, sir; and they never sets no wally on it, so I gits 
it for nuffin." 

"But of what use is that green scum, or duck- weed, as you 
call it ?" 

" Did yer honour never keep no ducks r" (I was compelled 
to confess my inexperience.) " Yy, then, I'll tell yer honour. 
Yer see this ere as grows on the top of the vater is duck-veed, 
and in course the ducks is fond on it ; and them as keeps 
ducks is glad to git it, in course, at a low figure. So yer see, 
as I gits it for nuffin but my trouble, I can afford to sell it 
cheap. " 

" You don't pretend to say that people buy it r" 

" Don't I though? Ketch me givvin on it avay ! I gits a 
penny a misure for every morsel on it ; and voth the money, 
and no mistake." 

" And where do you find customers ?" 

" Yy, that's the vurst on it too. 'Taint much of a nosegay 



STRUGGLES FOR LIFE. 21 

to carry about a feller ; still I don't travel no great vays — 
hadn't need, you s'pose. Yell, then, sir, as you don't 
calkilate no hopposition, an' pYaps you'll stan' the price of 
a half-pint, I don't mind tellin' yer. My valk is Tuttle- 
street, the Hambury, and Strutton Ground, and Brewers 
Green, and Palmer's Willage, and York Street, vere there's 
lots o' courts and alleys, and ducks in course." 

" Keep ducks there ? Why, those are the filthiest neigh- 
bourhoods in Westminster." 

" That's the werry reason, sir: there ii.so much mud, 
they vants the ducks to gobble it up. He — he !" 

" But where do they find room for them ? There are nei- 
ther yards nor ponds." 

"Oh, there's the street-door front by day, and they doos 
werry veil under the bed o' nights. Eut I'm werry dry a' 
talkin', yer honour; and I mustn't vaste no time, for yer 
see this ere sort o' green stuff vont keep not nohow, and 
must all be sold to-night." 

"Dry! why, you are dripping wet from head to foot." 
"No thin' but vater, sir; and vater never vets Jakes, cos, 
d'ye see, I perfers beer." 
" Is your name Jakes ?" 

"No, sir, my name's Yillums — Ned Yillums. Eut they 
calls me Jakes cos I scums the mud-pools and ditches. Eut 
them as call names pays their pennies ; so I takes their tin 
and their compliments together, and never minds. Yer ho- 
nour's a goin' to stan' summat, I know." 

Having complied with the poor fellow's demand, and helped 
him, as I best could, to shoulder his nauseous burden, I saw 
him trudge off beneath it, at a good five-mile-an-hour pace, 
to the sale of his moist merchandise. As he vanished with 
his dripping load, I could not help mentally comparing the 
present contents of the wine -basket to those of a past day — * 
the sparkling juice of the grape to the reeking weed — and the 
different destinies of those who revelled round the bottles, and 



22 CTJEIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

his who catered for the ducks. Eut the fellow was not to be. 
pitied, and I felt that compassion would have been in his case 
injustice. He had health, humour, and spirits, which a wine- 
bibbing dyspeptic might have envied ; and if his philosophy- 
was not as elevated as that of "Wordsworth's " leech- gatherer 
on the lonely moor," it was, to say the least of it, as practical. 

GEEEN FOOD FOE, SINGING-BIEDS. 

This is another article of perambulating merchandise pecu- 
liar to the great city, and one which meets with a regular 
and ready market, during the greater part of the year. Chick- 
weed, groundsel, seed-grasses, and round green turfs, form the 
staple of the merchant's wares, with which he threads the 
streets and suburbs during the middle portion of the day ; his 
cry being seldom heard before ten or eleven in the morning, 
and ceasing ere sundown, when his customers and consumers 
go to roost. One of these verdant professionals passes my 
window thrice a week during the summer months, and I have 
frequently encountered him in occasional strolls for the last 
ten years. Tall and erect, brawny and broad-shouldered, and 
bronzed with the suns of sixty summers, he looks more like a 
trooper of the Guards than a retailer of chickweed. Eut he 
evidently delights in his way of life, which leads him to the 
green fields ere the lark is yet aloft ; and as he plods his dila- 
tory way along the public thoroughfares, he sings his loud and 
sonorous song to a self-taught tune. " Groundsel and chick- 
weed for the pretty little singing-bird' ' is the song; and the 
tune, commencing by a chant of four words on C, the first 
note, runs down the scale, like the simple chime of village 
bells, to the octavo below, upon which he dwells with a force 
and gusto that is quite catching, ere he resumes his everlasting 
Da Capo. 

One day, while choosing a turf from his basket, to gratify 
an impudent pet bird, I questioned my tall salesman as to his 
inducement for following such a mode of life. " Well, sir," 



STRUGGLES FOR LIFE. 23 

said he, " I don't mind telling you, as you are a regular cus- 
tomer. The fact is, I couldn't do nothing else at the time I 
begun it, and wasn't fit neither for regular work. You must 
know, sir, I was bred a farm-labourer, and might have done 
well enough, for I was always fond of field-work, and cattle- 
tending, and such-like. Eut then, d'ye see, in eighteen- seven 
I listed — all along of a purty girl as didn't know her own 
mind — and main sad and sorry we both of us were when we 
found I couldn't be got off from serving. Eut that's neither 
here nor there. "We parted, and in less than four years I 
went to Spain, where I had enough of sodgering. I've 
stood, sir, up to my breast in growing corn, and seen the ears 
on't cut off wi' bullets as clean as a whistle. Eut that's no 
matter. I got a bad wound at Yittoria, which was the hard- 
est day's work I ever see in my life. So I was sent home 
wi* a hartificial brain-pan, and eighteen pence a day. I 
couldn' live very well upon that, you know, sir ; so I comes 
up from Chatham (you know, sir, we're all sent to Chatham, 
up to Pitt's there, when we come from foreign parts), up to 
town here, to look about me. Well, sir, I couldn't get nothing 
as suited me, nor as didn't suit me either, for the matter o' 
that; and then my head did swim badly at times, though 
that's all right now, thank God ! So, sir, I was a- standing 
one morning in one of them little streets by St. Paul's, 
when a gen'leman comes out of a countin'- house wi' green 
shutters and a pen in his ear, and he says to me — ' My 
good fellow,' says he, ' haven't you got nothing to do ? I 
want a man/ says he, 'as got nothing to do.' 'JSTo, sir/ 
says I, i I han't ; and I should be very much obleeged to you 
for a job.' ' Then/ says he, ' do you see that lark in the 
cage, and do you know what he wants ?' ' I see him plain 
enough, sir/ says I ; 'and it strikes me he wants to get out.' 
1 No he don't/ says he ; 'he's not such a fool. He wants a 
fresh turf; and if you'll go and cut him one, I'll give you 
sixpence.' ' That's a bargain/ said I, and away I went ; 



24 CT7EI0SITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

but I found it a long way to the green grass, and that sixpence 
was arned harder than some. But I cut half-a-score turfs 
while I was about it, thinking there might be more birds than 
one with a country taste. "Well, the gen'leman gave me a 
shilling when he knowed how far I had been, and I sold all 
the tothers for a penny a-piece. Arter that I took up with 
the weeds and grasses, and got a regular walk (one of my 
customers, as thinks himself very witty, calls it Birdcage 
"Walk); and many's the bird in this here town as knows my 
song as well as his own. That was my beginning sir, and 
I've kept the game alive ever since ; 'cept in winter- time, 
when I sells snow and ice to the 'fectioners, and brandy-balls, 
and sich-like, to warm the stomach on skating- days. And let 
me tell you, sir, I likes feeding the little birds, and being my 
own master, better than shooting and sticking my fellow - 
creeters at another man's bidding ; and between you and me 
and the post it pays better.' ' 

With this the quondam grenadier departed, and in less than 
a minute I heard the well-known cry, " Groundsel and chick- 
weed for the pretty little singing bird !" 

THE HUSHEOOM-HTTNTEE. 

Pursuing an avocation which renders me occasionally liable 
to be abroad at all hours of the night, the opportunity is forced 
upon me of observing the various phases of London life which 
each succeeding hour reveals. [Following the example of the 
Yicar of Wakefield, I never refuse the challenge of any man, 
whatever his apparent station, who proffers his conversation ; 
and I have often found the gossip of wayfarers both interesting 
and profitable, while I am not aware that I ever lost anything 
by giving them a hearing. Business-belated one September 
night, or rather morning, for midnight had long ceased tolling 
from the thousand churches of the city, I was seeking for. a 
short cut homewards, and stood for a moment hesitating at a 



STRUGGLES FOR LIFE. 25 

hitherto unexplored turning out of Gray's Inn Lane, when I 
was accosted by a man of strangely uncouth appearance, who' 
inquired if I had lost my way. Upon stating that I merely 
wanted the shortest cut towards Hollo way, he said he was 
going the whole distance, and beyond, and should be happy to 
show me the nearest road; adding, that he supposed I was 
desirous of getting to bed, " which I," said he, " have just 
left, to begin my day's work." "A strange hour," thought I, 
"to begin a day's work; not yet one o'clock." And as I 
walked behind him through the narrow and dirty lanes of that 
neighbourhood, I availed myself of the accommodation afforded 
by the gas-lamps to scrutinize his figure and costume. Of a 
slim and wiry make, and of the middle size, and about thirty- 
five years of age, I saw from his motions that he was active, 
agile, and a stranger to fatigue. His whole dress fitted his 
muscular frame almost as closely as that of Harlequin himself, 
but was composed of the vilest materials; half leather, half 
cloth, greasy, and rent, and patched and re-patched in a hun- 
dred places. A short pair of hobnailed Bluchers encased his 
feet ; and a skull-cap of leather, guiltless of the smallest indi- 
cation of a brim, covered his head, and fastened under his chin 
by a strap. At his back hung a long, shallow, wicker-basket, 
with a canvas covering : this was strapped round his waist. 
He was accompanied by a small, black, and ugly half-breed 
terrier — an old hand, evidently, for he lost no ground, but 
kept uniformly before his master, and if he outran him, never 
returned upon his track, but waited quietly till he came up. 

" That is a prudent dog of yours," I said, as we emerged 
into a wider thoroughfare, and walked side by side. 

" Ay, sir; he has learned prudence in the same school as 
his master. He was wild enough in his young days, like my- 
self; and, like me, he has found out that if he would be of 
any use to-morrow, he must take care of himself to-day." 

" You said you were just beginning your day's work; may 
I ask what is your occupation ?" 



26 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

" Occupation, properly speaking, I have none, sir — worse 
luck ; I am one of a good many, driven from a thriving trade 
by modern machinery and improvements. You must know, 
sir, I was brought up to my father's trade, that of a calen- 
derer; and a very decent property the old man left when he 
died. Four thousand pounds there was in the three per 
cents., which I, like a fool, prevailed upon my poor old mother 
to throw into the business, for the sake of extending it, 
thinking I could make five- and- twenty per cent, of it instead 
of three ; and so I might too, but for new inventions, which 
threw me out of the market, and brought us in the end to 
ruin. I sometimes thank God the old lady didn't live to see 
the upshot of it all. AVe passed her grave, sir, two minutes 
ago, in the Spa Fields' burying- ground. Veil, sir, when it 
was all over, I paid a good dividend ; and the creditors, seeing 
how the matter was, gave me a couple of hundreds to begin 
again with. So, being always fond of books, and having a 
fancy for the trade, I thought I might do well enough — 
having only myself to look after — in a bookseller's shop ; so 
I took a neat house in the JSTew Road, and laid out all my 
money in books, and sat myself down behind the counter to 
wait for customers. Perhaps you would not think it, but 
there I sat from lEonday morning till Saturday night without 
seeing a soul enter the shop except one child, who wanted 
change for a sixpence; and yet five or six thousand people passed 
the open door every day. The second week was not much better ; 
few people came, and those who did come wanted the books 
for less than they cost, and assured me — which I afterwards 
found was true enough — that they could get them for less 
elsewhere. The business never came to anything, as you may 
suppose. In the course of six months I found out, what I 
ought to have known at first, that I didn't understand it ; so 
I closed with a man who offered to take the stock at a valua- 
tion, and relieve me of the house. A rare valuation it was ! 
All the volumes were lumped together, at sixpence a-piece ; 



STBTJGGLES FOE LIFE. 27 

and I saw the major part of them a week afterwards bundled 
into a great box at the door, and ticketed " JSinepence each." 
I received something less than a fourth of the original cost of 
the whole, and walked out, not particularly well satisfied, to 
try again. 

" I was afraid to venture upon any other business, and 
therefore looked out for a situation of some sort. If I could 
have written a decent hand, I might perhaps have got a berth 
as under clerk ; but nobody could ever read my writing ; and 
though I threw away five or six pounds to an advertising 
teacher, who sports a colossal fist and goose-quill on his sign- 
board, all my endeavours to mend it were of no use. I need 
not trouble you with the fifty attempts I made to gain an 
honest livelihood, further than to say that they were all for a 
long time failures. My money went by degrees. As I grew 
older I grew poorer, and went down of course in the social 
scale. I have been warden in a jail, whence I was turned out 
because a highwayman, whom I had compelled to good beha- 
viour, swore I was an old associate ; I have been a pedlar and 
robbed of my pack on Durdham Down ; I have been a billiard- 
marker, and kicked out by the proprietor because I would not 
score more games than the players had played ; I have been 
cabman and hackney-coachman, till the omnibuses cut the 
cabs' throats ; I have kept a fruit- stall on the pavement till 
it wouldn't keep me ; I have hawked about the street every 
possible commodity you could mention ; I have driven cattle 
to Smithfield, and thence to the slaughter-house ; I have sold 
cats' meat and dogs' meat, and dealt in bones and rags ; in 
short, I have done everything but beg, and have lived a whole 
week upon sixpence, because I would not do that." 

" I hope things are not so bad with you just now ?" said I, 
desirous of hearing the conclusion of his history. 

" Not quite, sir : there is truth in the old proverb, * He 
that is down can fall no lower.' At first I suffered a deal of 
mortification from the neglect of friends of prosperous days, 

c2 



28 CURIOSITIES OF LOtfDOtf LIFE. 

who were very liberal of their compassion and condolence, 
which are things I hate, but chary of everything else. I be- 
lieve I conferred an obligation upon them all, when I resolved, 
as soon I did, never to trouble them again. 

" One hue morning, after walking the streets all night for 
want of a bed, I found myself in" Co vent Garden market at 
sunrise, among a shoal of carts and waggons loaded with vege- 
tables for the day's sale. The thought struck me at once that 
here I might pick up a job : I commenced the look-out in 
good earnest, and wasn't long of getting employment. I 
received threepence for pitching a couple of tons of cabbages 
out of a waggon, and scoring them off; but then I was only a 
deputy, and was paid under price. This, however, procured 
me a breakfast, and gave me heart to try again. I picked up 
three shillings altogether in the course of the day, two of 
which I paid in advance for a regular lodging for the following 
week — a luxury I had not then enjoyed for some months. 
The next day was not a market-day, and I did not manage so 
well ; but I stuck by the market, and learned many modes of 
earning a penny. I bought vegetables at a low price, or got 
them in return for my labour ; these I sold again, and ma- 
naged to earn something, at all events, every day. Once, on 
taking potatoes to a baker who purchased all I could get, I 
was asked for mushrooms, for which the old chap had a mighty 
relish. I promised to get him some, but found them too dear 
in the market to allow any margin for me ; so recollecting that 
I had seen a vast number the year before in a certain part of 
the Barnet road, during my experience as assistant drover, 
I set off on an exploring expedition. Having arrived at the 
spot, after a pretty close search, I succeeded in gathering a tidy 
crop, though not without a good deal of labour and inconve- 
nience. I found that the sale of these paid me well for my 
trouble. • I often make between three and four shillings by a 
trip, and sometimes more. But I soon found out that others 
reaped that ground as well as myself; and to keep it pretty 



STRUGGLES FOR LIFE. 29 

well in my own hands, I find it necessary to be on the spot 
before the sun is up. By this means I get more ; and, what 
is of greater importance, they are of better quality." 

" And pray, does your dog perform any part in the busi- 
ness, or is he merely a companion ?" 

" Why, sir, I daresay dogs might be taught to hunt mush- 
rooms as well as truffles ; but there is no occasion for that, as 
mushrooms grow above ground, and can't well be missed. 
But my dog's part is to mind the basket, and he does the 
business well. You see I leave the harvest to his care, while 
I scramble through hedges and over ditches and fences in 
search of more. I saw you quizzing my surtout; 'tis n't much 
to look at, but it serves my purpose better than a coat with 
two tails. I can ram my head, in this thick shoe-leather 
cap, through a quickset-hedge, where a fox would hardly 
follow me ; and when I have got this small bag full (pro- 
ducing a canvas bag from his pocket), I return and deposit 
them in the basket till the work is done. I am back again in 
the market by the time the housekeepers are abroad pur- 
chasing provisions for the day. My stock never hangs long 
on hand ; and it is very seldom that I am reduced to the neces- 
sity of lowering my price, or consuming them myself." 

" This is a laborious calling," I said, " and one that cannot 
be very remunerative, or allow you to make much provision 
for the future." 

"Not much, sir, it is true; but yet I do make some. I 
save a shilling every week at least, and sometimes, in a lucky 
season, as much as five; that goes into the savings' -bank, and 
would suffice to keep me out of the hospital in case of illness, 
which I don't much fear, being a teetotaller and pretty well 
weather-proof. I think it was Dr. Johnson, but I won't be 
certain, who said, ' No man ever begins to save unless he has 
a prospect of accumulation.' I don't think that is altogether 
true ; at any rate, if it is, I am the exception that proves the 
rule. I began to save, strange as it may sound, because I did 



30 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON" LIFE. 

not know what to do with my money. Having learned by 
necessity to live npon the smallest possible amount, I was 
afraid, when my gains exceeded that, of again acquiring luxu- 
rious habits, which it had cost me so much to get rid of; for 
that reason I put the first five shillings into the bank, and have 
added to it weekly, with very few omissions, ever since. I 
will not deny that, with the gradual increase of my little 
hoard, a new prospect has opened for me, and that I only wait 
for the possession of a certain amount to begin business in the 
market upon a more respectable footing, which will allow me 
to dispense with my midnight labours." 

Here he ceased; and soon after, arriving at the corner of the 
street in which was my own house, I bade him good morning ; 
and wishing a speedy and prosperous result to his economic 
endeavours, parted with the mushroom -hunter. 

THE OAEEET MASTER. 

This is not a title assumed by any particular class, but rather 
a soubriquet bestowed upon one who cannot correctly be said to 
belong to any. He is operative and manufacturer, merchant 
and labourer, combined in one person ; and has dealings both 
wholesale and retail, after a fashion of his own. IN"o man can 
rightly accuse him of sapping our commercial system by an 
undue extension of credit, seeing that it is very rarely that he 
trusts anybody, and still more rarely is anybody found who 
will trust him. He works at an easy trade, and manufactures 
articles of every sort or description that may be wanted, which 
he has wit or ingenuity enough to turn out of hand. Two 
things are essential to a man's becoming a garret master : in 
the first place, he must be able to practise some occupation 
which requires but little capital to set him up in business ; 
and, in the second place, he must be unwilling, either from a 
spirit of insubordination, a love of idleness, or a feeling of in- 
dependence, or else incapable, from want of average skill in 



STRUGGLES FOR LIFE. 31 

his calling, to work as a journeyman. Whatever be his 
motive, it can hardly be the love of gain, since his profits, so 
far at least as one can judge from his personal appearance and 
domestic surroundings, must fall far short of those of an aver- 
age workman. There may be some few exceptions to whom 
this general character is not applicable ; indeed I know there 
are ; but the more respectable of the number would, I have 
reason to think, subscribe to the truth of this delineation of 
the general body — if body they can be called — who live in 
perfect isolation, and never come together. 

Every one who walks the streets of London, if he ever ex- 
ercise his observation at all, must have remarked, amongst the 
infinite variety of wares disposed for sale inside and outside of 
the endless array of shops that line the public thoroughfares, 
a prodigious number of articles which are not, properly 
speaking, the production of any particular or known species 
of handicraft ; or if some of them be such ostensibly, it be- 
comes apparent, upon inspection, and upon a comparison of 
prices, that they are not the manufactures of well-practised 
hands, but are hastily and fraudulently got up, to delude the 
eyes of the unwary by the semblance of workmanship. Pic- 
ture-frames, looking more like gilt gingerbread than carved 
gold, which they should resemble ; small cabinets of cedar- 
wood, and miniature chests of drawers, which seem to stand 
midway between a toy and a domestic implement ; easy (to 
break) chairs, which a man of fifteen stone would crush to 
pieces ; mirrors of all sizes, each one affording a new version 
of your astonished face ; slippers and clogs of every possible 
material ; boys' caps at half-a-crown a dozen, of every variety 
of shape and colour, manufactured from the tailors' clippings; 
whetstones of every geological formation — trap (for customers) 
predominating ; cribbage boards, draught boards, dominoes, 
and chess-men, at any price you like ; work-boxes, writing- 
desks, and music-stands, glued together from the refuse of a 
cabinet-maker's workshop ; carpenters' tools incapable of an 



32 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

edge, among which figures a centre -bit, with twenty pieces, 
for five shillings — a bait for amateur mechanics which has 
astonishing success ; towel-horses, that will fall to pieces if 
not tenderly handled ; and flights of steps, leading to a broken 
head, or something worse — all demand attention by their plau- 
sible appearance and astonishingly low price. But these are 
not all. The heedless bargain -hunter may fool away a good 
round sum as easily as the veriest trifle. Gaudy pianofortes, 
magnificent-looking instruments, labelled " Broad wood" or 
" Collard," may be had at (i an immense sacrifice " (this is true 
in the buyer's case), which ought to be warranted not to stand 
in tune for twenty-four hours, and to become veritable tin- 
kettles in a twelvemonth. Horrible fiddles, by the thousand, 
constructed only to sell and to set the teeth on edge, lie in 
wait for the musical tyro ; seraphines that growl like angry 
demons, until they become asthmatic, when they wheeze away 
their hateful lives in a month or two, are to be found in every 
broker's shop, together with every other musical instrument 
you could name ; all uniting to prove that if the best articles 
are to be procured in London, so are the worst, and that too 
in abundance. 

Nor does the evil stop here. " The world is still deceived 
with ornament," and the imitators of things real know it well, 
and make a good market by the knowledge. Woe to the scien- 
tific student who, anxious to economise his funds, buys his 
necessary instruments of any other than a well-known and 
established maker ! In no department of manufacture is there 
a more profitable field for humbug and plunder than in this. 
All descriptions of scientific instruments, surgical, optic, chem- 
ical, engineering, and others, abound in every quarter — the 
pawnbroker being the chief medium or middleman through 
whom they find their way to the luckless experimentalist. 
Telescopes with conveniently soiled lenses ; camera-lucidas, by 
means of which Argus himself could see nothing ; scalpels, 
lancets, and amputating knives, never intended to cut; sur- 



STRUGGLES FOE LIFE. 33 

gical saws with tender teeth ; air-pumps in want of sucker ; 
pentagraphs, with rickety joints and false admeasurements ; 
unseasoned glass retorts ; crucibles sure to split on the fire ; 
opera-glasses with twopenny lenses in tubes of specious mag- 
nificence ; and a thousand other things, which are manufactured 
weekly in large quantities, but never for any other purpose 
than to pawn or to sell, are to be met with in every street, 
and proclaim the industry of a class of operatives whose 
labours are anything but a benefit to the general community. 

It is not my intention to lay all these enormities upon the 
shoulders of the garret master ; indeed many of the manufac- 
turers of the vile wares above mentioned are men of consi- 
derable capital, those especially who fabricate and dea] in the 
more expensive articles. But yet justice to the subject of this 
sketch compels me to declare that the guilty parties are 
mainly members of his class; though individuals are not 
wanting among them, the history of whose lives would pre- 
sent the praiseworthy struggle of industry and integrity 
against adverse circumstances. If the reader will accompany 
me to the narrow theatre of his operations, he may behold 
the garret master in the midst of his avocations, and then 
form as lenient a judgment as the somewhat singular spectacle 
will admit. 

On a summer evening in the year 184 — , having been re- 
quested by a country correspondent to make inquiries respect- 
ing the execution of a commission entrusted to one of this 
tribe, I set out in the direction indicated in his letter, and 
arrived at the door of the house in which the garret master 
dwelt, about half an hour before sunset. The place was a 
back street running nearly parallel with Holborn, in the 
neighbourhood of one of the inns of court, and one that, judg- 
ing from the height and structure of the house, had once laid 
claim to a character for respectability, not to say gentility : 
but all such pretensions had evidently long been given up ; 
and the lofty dwelling, fashioned originally for the abodes of 

c3 



34 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

easy and comfortable independence, now stood in begrimed 
and dingy neglect, the nncared-for tenements of the artisan 
and the labourer. The door of the house I entered stood 
fastened open ; and the loose boards of the bare passage, 
wanting scraper, mat, and oil- cloth, bent and clattered un- 
der my feet. The walls, from the door to the summit of 
the topmost stair, were of a dark-brown colour, rising from 
the accumulated soiling of half a century, and polished by 
the friction of passers up and down, except where some few 
tatters of the original papering yet hung about them, or where 
the plaster had been knocked away, through the careless por- 
terage of heavy articles. The balusters as far as the first floor 
were in tolerable repair, though some of the rails showed by their 
want of paint that they were substitutes for others which had 
left the rank. Higher up, they were half deficient ; and near 
the top story had been removed altogether, probably for fuel, 
by some starving inmate, and replaced by a fence of rough 
slab deal. Of this I was rather sensible by touch than by 
sight ; for the skylight that should have illuminated the stair- 
case was covered over, with the exception of one small cranny, 
plainly to exclude the weather, which would else have found 
entrance through the broken panes. I should be sorry to 
afford the reader too accurate a notion of the villanous odour 
that infected the atmosphere of the house ; it would have per- 
plexed even Coleridge — who said that in Cologne he "counted 
two-and-seventy stenches" — to have described it. It seemed 
a compound of spirits, beer, and stale tobacco, of rancid oil or 
varnish, with a flavour of a dog a month dead. I should men- 
tion that I knocked at one of five doors on the third floor, 
when three of them suddenly opened, but not the one to which 
I had applied my knuckles. Three dirty-faced matrons in 
dishabille, two of them having infants at their breast, made 
their simultaneous appearance, and inquired what I wanted ; 
one of them informing me that "the doctor " was not within, 
but would be found at the tap. Mentally wondering 



STRUGGLES FOE LIFE. 35 

who t€ the doctor " thus domiciled could be, I stated that I 

had business with Mr. T , and requested to be shown 

his door. " It is the fifth door on the floor above," said 
the woman who had mentioned " the doctor/' withdrawing 
as she spoke. Arriving at the door in question, I could 
hear a murmur of voices, and the whirling of a wheel 
in rapid motion. The door was opened immediately at my 
summons, and the rays of a lurid sunset streamed in upon 
the landing-place. The woman who answered the door 
seemed astonished at my unlooked-for appearance, and plainly 
expected a different party. As she drew back to make room 
for my entrance, a scene met my view, too common, I fear, in 
the industrial resorts of our great cities, but one calling aloud 
for amendment and redress in every possible particular. In a 
room, the dimensions of which might be about sixteen feet by 
eleven or twelve, were living an entire family, consisting of 
certainly not fewer than eight persons. Near a stove, placed 
about a yard from the fireplace, the funnel going into the 
chimney through a hole in the wall above the mantelpiece, sat 

the garret master, Mr. T , in the act of filling his pipe. 

Eeyond a shirt, dirty and ragged, canvas trousers, and a pair 
of old slippers, cut down from older boots, he had nothing on 
his person, if we except a beard of a month's growth. A lad of 
seventeen or eighteen, similarly non-dressed, whose unwashed 
flesh peeped through a dozen rents in his garments, was busy 
at an old rickety lathe turning pill-boxes, some gross of which 
were scattered on the board in front of him ; as he turned for 
a moment at my entrance, he showed a face haggard and wan, 
the index of bad diet and early intemperance. Seated at a 
carpenter's bench, which, together with the lathe, occupied the 
whole portion of the room next the window, was a girl of 
nineteen or twenty, engaged in carefully spreading gold leaf 
upon the word " ctjppikg," previously written with varnish 
upon a strip of glass. Her costume, surmounted with a tat- 
tered man's jacket, would have disgraced the " black doll" 



36 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDON LIFE. 

usually suspended over a rag- shop ; the same indication of 
semi-starvation and (alas that it must be said !) of intemper- 
ance was legible in a countenance that ought to have been, 
and indeed was once, interesting. At the end of the bench, 
in the corner of the room, a boy of twelve or thirteen years 
was occupied in French-polishing a few small and showy frames 
adapted for the reception of the glass labels. At the other 
corner, to the left of the lathe, was a still younger child — I can 
hardly say of which sex — busily fitting the covers to the pill- 
boxes, and laying them in dozens for package; while an infant 
of scarce three years was asleep in the shavings under the 
bench, where, it was evident from the presence of the brown 
and grimy blanket-rags, he would be joined at night by other 
members of the family. There was no bedstead in the room ; 
but what was presumably the bed of the parents — a heap of 
filthy bundling — lay on the floor between the door and the 
corner of the apartment. "While I was making inquiries con- 
cerning the commission of my country friend, the mother 
stepped between me and the father, to whom I had addressed 
myself, and intimated by a look of shame, alarm, and entreaty, 
that she was the more fit party to be questioned. The man, 
however, told her, with an oath, to stand aside ; to which com- 
mand she paid no attention, but proceeded to inform me they 
were on the point of completing my iriend's order, and that 
the goods should be forwarded to my address, if I would leave 
it, early on the following morning. While she was speaking, 
I heard a light foot on the stairs ; and the door opening, a 
little girl of about six, almost decently clad in comparison with 
the others, entered the room, clasping a black bottle carefully 
in both hands. The mother, apparently unwilling that a 
stranger should be aware of the nature of the burden brought 
by the child, was about concealing it in a cupboard ; but the 
father, who, I now for the first time perceived, was on the 
high road to intoxication, swore at her angrily for pretending 
to be ashamed of what he proclaimed she liked as well as any- 



STHT7GGLES TOR LIFE. 37 

body, and loudly demanded the gin-bottle. With a sigh and 
a look of shame she complied with his desire, when he imme- 
diately applied himself to the contents with an air of dogged 
satisfaction. The child who had brought in the gin was the 
only one of the family that had the slightest appearance of 
health in the countenance ; and she, it was easy to see, owed 
it to her fortunate position as general messenger to the whole, 
and to the exercise and free air this function procured her. 
All the rest were in a sort of etiolated condition — pale and 
wan from confinement, bad air, and worse food. The dress 
of the whole family, with the exception of that of the little 
messenger, who was kept in some show of decency for the 
sake of appearances, would not have sold for a penny above 
the rag price in Monmouth Street. Neither mother, nor 
daughter grown up to womanhood, seemed to have preserved 
a relic of that graceful sentiment of personal propriety, which 
is the last thing that the sex generally surrenders to the "want 
w r hich cometh like an armed man." But here want was not 
the destroyer : a fiend of more hideous aspect and deadlier 
purpose held undisputed sway in this wretched abode of per- 
verted industry and precocious intemperance. As I departed 
down the crazy stairs, I could not help compassionating the 
hapless mother, whom I thought it more than probable the 
hateful vice of intoxication had first oppressed, and then 
seduced. Her bloated countenance left no room for doubt as 
to the truth of her tyrant's assertion; but there remained on 
it yet the trace of former truthfulness and kindliness, and the 
burning sense of shame attendant upon her present condition. 
On the coming doom of the family — the son, the daughter, 
the toiling children, the sleeping infant — it was too painful 
to reflect. 

THE LABEL PEIXTEE. 

The next day, my friend's commission requiring it, I paid a 
visit to one of the same class in a different line of business. In 



38 CUKIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

one of the small courts leading out of Drury Lane I found this 
worthy, whose occupation was that of printing labels in gold 
letters upon coloured paper. Fortunately for the fair sex he 
was a bachelor, and being on the verge of fifty, was likely to 
continue so. All the implements of his art, and they were 
not few, together with his bed and his beehive -chair, were 
around him in a room a dozen feet square, and which he gaily 
styled the " parlour next to the sky." His press was a con- 
trivance such as I had never seen before, economizing both 
space and labour, at the penalty — which he seemed to care 
little about — of abominably bad work : the pressure was 
produced by the action of a pedal near the floor under the 
machine, and consequently the labour of rolling in and 
rolling out, indispensable in the common printing-press, was 
avoided. 

When I entered, he was actually printing the word "Lodg- 
ins" upon half-a-dozen strips of polished azure paper, apply- 
ing powdered gold, with a pencil of camel-hair, to the varnish 
or size used instead of ink, as each was impressed ! Upon my 
pointing out the liberty he had taken with the orthography of 
the word, he seemed not to comprehend my meaning; and 
remarking that he never did nor could understand any of the 
hographies, seriously inquired what was wrong. Being at 
length made aware that another g was wanting (but not be- 
fore he had made careful reference to a dog's-eared dic- 
tionary), he assumed a look of strange mortification and 
perplexity. It was not altogether that he was ashamed of 
his ignorance; of that the poor fellow had been too long 
conscious ; it was rather that he could see no remedy in the 
present case. " This, sir," said he, "is a noosance, and no 
mistake ; that's my biggest fount, and there is but one alpha- 
bet of it beyond the vowels !" After a minute's consideration, 
however, and scratching of his grizzled pate, he brightened 
up, and went on with the affair as it was, with the consolatory 
declaration that they were no great scholars thereabout ; that 



STETJGGLES TOE LIFE\ 39 

there were others no wiser than himself; and that the things 
were for people in the court, who would never find it out; to 
which he added, that " if anybody had a right to spell a word 
as he chose, it was a printer short of types." Somewhat 
tickled with the fellow's good-temper and accommodating 
philosophy, I sat down to wait for my friend's packet of 
labels, which he said only required taking out of the 
finishing-press to be ready for delivery. I learned from 
his conversation that he had served his time to a little 
bookseller and printer at a small town on the Velsh coast; 
but he had spent most of the seven years in running about the 
town as circulating librarian, or waiting in the shop, and not 
as many months altogether in the office, where there was 
generally nothing to be done. Discharged of course at the 
end of his term, to make room for a new apprentice with a 
new premium, he had come to seek his fortune in London. 
After considerable difficulty and disappointment, he at length 
succeeded in obtaining an engagement in a large office. On 
taking possession of his u frame," he said, at first he was so 
alarmed at the exploits of the numbers of clever and rapid 
workmen around him, that he had not the proper use of the 
few faculties he could boast, and could think of nothing but 
his own want of skill. This state of mind only made the 
matter worse. Nervous and excited, he endeavoured to make 
the same show of celerity as the others, and got through the 
first day in a state of complete bewilderment. The second 
and third passed off a little more to his satisfaction ; and he 
was beginning to nourish some small degree of hope, when on 
the fourth day the first evidence of the value of his labour 
was put into his hands, in the form of a proof copy of his 
work, sent from one of the readers, whose office it is to mark 
the mistakes of the compositor, for the purpose of correction. 
Such a horrid amount of blunders he declared the world had 
never seen before at one view : to the sheet upon which the 



40 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

broad page was printed, the corrector had been compelled 
to join another, to afford space to mark the errors. " Upon 
my sonl, sir," said he, u I conld not stand the sight of it ; 
moreover, the man behind me was grinning over his frame, 
and telegraphing the whole room. I wished myself a thou- 
sand miles away ; and seizing my hat and coat, bolted down 
the stairs as fast as I could run. I got a letter in a few days 
from the party who recommended me, desiring me to return 
and resume my work ; but I could not do it. The face of 
that chap grinning over my shoulder has given me the night- 
mare fifty times. That's six- and- twenty years ago, and I 
have never been near the place since. " Sick of the printing, 
he had next tried to work as a bookbinder, which, as is usual 
in country towns, he had learned as well (or rather as ill) 
as the other ; but here also he found himself equally at fault. 
Discharged from the bookbinder's to make room for a more 
expert hand, he found himself cast upon the world, with no 
available means of subsistence. Want of funds, speedily 
followed by want of food, drove him again to make application 
to the printing-offices ; but now he avoided large houses, and 
was at length fortunate enough to locate himself in a suburban 
establishment of small pretensions, where he got board and 
lodging, and a nominal salary, doing what he could, for just 
what the proprietor, who was as poor almost as himself, 
could afford to give him. Here he stayed, on and off, as 
he said, for more than a dozen years, during which he con- 
trived to add something to his knowledge of the business, and 
to save a few pounds, with which, on the demise of his em- 
ployer, he purchased a part of the materials he had so long 
handled, and commenced printer in his own right. It ap- 
peared that the whole of his gains during all the years of his 
mastership had not averaged much above forty pounds a year, 
out of which he had to pay 3s. 6d. a week for the rent of his 
room. He showed me his stock of implements, consisting 



STRUGGLES FOE LIFE. 41 

principally of solid brass blocks, engraved in relief for the pur- 
pose of printing gold labels attachable to the thousand -and- one 
wares of druggists, chemists, haberdashers, fancy stationers, and 
numberless other traders. The blocks were for the most part 
the property of his employers ; and he found it his interest 
to keep a small stock of each on hand, to meet the demands 
of the proprietors. He attributed the blotchy impression 
which characterized all his work, mainly, to his rickety 
press, and sighed for a better, which he had yet no prospect of 
obtaining ; but he observed that though his work would look 
very bad in ink, it was a very different thing in gold, that 
made even a blotch ornamental, and of which people seldom 
complained of having too much for their money. 

This poor fellow presented the most remarkable instance of 
unfitness for the business he followed that I ever met with. 
"With huge, horny, unmanageable fingers, and defective vision, 
he pursued a craft, to the successful prosecution of which 
quick, keen sight, and manual dexterity are indispensable. 
Requiring a knowledge of at least so much grammar a^ is com- 
prised in the arts of orthography and punctuation, he was 
profoundly ignorant of both. Thirty years of practice as a 
printer had not taught him to spell the commonest words in 
the language, as I became aware from certain cacographic 
despatches on business matters subsequently received from 
him. Honestest of bunglers ! one-half of his painstaking ex- 
istence was passed in repairing the blunders of the other; and 
yet it is a question whether he did not enjoy his being with 
as much relish as any man that ever lived. His cheerfulness 
was without a parallel in my experience : an inexhaustible 
spring of hilarity seemed welling from every feature. Mature 
had more than compensated him, by the bestowal of such a 
temperament, for all the sports of fortune. Proof against 
calamity, he grinned instinctively in the face of adverse cir- 
cumstances; and once declared to me that he did not think 



42 CURIOSITIES OP LONDON LIFE. 

any mortal thing could depress his animal spirits, unless it 
might be a drunken wife ; whether such an appendage to his 
fortunes might succeed in doing so he couldn't say, but he had 
no intention of making the experiment. 

He died the death one might almost have wished him, 
considering his solitary lot. He was found by an early visitor 
one morning dead in his beehive chair, the newspaper in his 
hand, a half- smoked pipe broken at his feet, a pint of hardly- 
tasted ale on the hob of the empty grate, and the candle 
burnt out in the socket on the little table at his side. 



43 



LONDON CEOSSIJSTG-SWEEPEES. 



Theee is no occupation in life, be it ever so humble, which is 
justly worthy of contempt, if by it a man is enabled to admi- 
nister to his necessities without becoming a burden to others, 
or a plague to them, by the parade of shoeless feet, fluttering 
rags, and a famished face. In the multitudinous drama of 
life, which on the wide theatre of the metropolis is ever 
enacting with so much intense earnestness, there is, and from 
the very nature of things there always must be, a numerous 
class of supernumeraries, who from time to time, by the force 
of varying circumstances, are pushed and hustled off the stage, 
and shuffled into the side-scenes, the drear and dusky back- 
ground of the world's proscenium. Of the thousands and tens 
of thousands thus rudely dealt with, he is surely not the 
worst, who, wanting a better weapon, shoulders a birch-broom, 
and goes forth to make his own way in the world, by remov- 
ing the moist impediments of filth and refuse from the way 
of his more fortunate fellows. Indeed, look upon him in what 
light you may, he is in some sort a practical moralist. Though 
far remote from the ivy chaplet on Wisdom's glorious brow, 
yet his stump of withered birch inculcates a lesson of virtue, 
by reminding us, that we should take heed to our steps in our 
journeyings through the wilderness of life ; and, so far as in 
him lies, he helps us to do so, and by the exercise of a very 
catholic faith, looks for his reward to the value he supposes 
us to entertain for that virtue which, from time immemorial, 
has been in popular parlance classed as next to godliness. 



44 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON" LIFE. 

Time was, it is said, when the profession of a street- 
sweeper in London was a certain road to competence and for- 
tune — when the men of the broom were men of capital; 
when they lived well, and died rich, and left legacies behind 
them to their regular patrons. These palmy days, at any rate, 
are past now. Let no man, or woman either, expect a legacy 
at this time of day from the receiver of his copper dole. The 
labour of the modern sweeper is nothing compared with his of 
half a century ago. The channel of viscous mud, a foot deep, 
through which, so late as the time when George the Third was 
king, the carts and carriages had literally to plough their way, 
no longer exists, and the labour of the sweeper is reduced to a 
tithe of what it was. He has no longer to dig a trench in the 
morning, and wall up the sides of his fosse with stiff earth, 
hoarded for the purpose, as we have seen him doing in the 
days when " Boney " was a terror. The city scavengers have 
reduced his work to a minimum, and his pay has dwindled 
proportionately. The twopences which used to be thrown to 
a sweeper will now pay for a ride, and the smallest coin is 
considered a sufficient guerdon for a service so light. But 
what he has lost in substantial emolument, he has gained in 
morale; he is infinitely more polite and attentive than he 
was ; he sweeps ten times as clean for a half-penny as he did 
for twopence or sixpence, and thanks you more heartily than 
was his wont in the days of yore. The truth is, that civility, 
as a speculation, is found to pay ; and the want of it, even 
among the very lowest rank of industrials in London, is at the 
present moment not merely a rarity, but an actual pheno- 
menon — always supposing that something is to be got by it. 

The increase of vehicles of all descriptions, but more espe- 
cially omnibuses, which are perpetually rushing along the 
main thoroughfares, has operated largely in shutting out the 
crossing-sweepers from what was at one period the principal 
theatre of their industry. Independent, too, of the unbroken 
stream of carriages which renders sweeping during the day 



CROSSING-SWEEPERS. 45 

impossible, and the collection of small coin from the crowd 
who dart impatiently across the road when a practicable 
breach presents itself, equally so, it is found that too dense a 
population is less favourable to the brotherhood of the broom 
than one ever so sparse and thin. Had the negro of Waithman's 
obelisk survived the advent of Shillibeer, he would have had 
to shift his quarters, or to have drawn upon his three-and- 
a-half per cents, to maintain his position. The sweepers who 
work on the great lines of traffic from Oxford Street west to 
Aldgate, are consequently not nearly so numerous as they once 
were, though the members of the profession have probably 
doubled their numbers within the last twenty years. They 
exercise considerable judgment in the choice of their locations, 
making frequent experiments in different spots, feeling the 
pulse of the neighbourhood, as it were, ere they finally settle 
down to establish a permanent connection. 

TVe shall come to a better understanding of the true con- 
dition of these muddy nomads by considering them in various 
classes, as they actually exist, and each of which may be iden- 
tified without much trouble. The first in the rank is he who 
is bred to the business, who has followed it from his earliest 
infancy, and never dreamed of pursuing any other calling. 
We must designate him as 

!No. 1. The Professional Sweeper. — He claims precedence 
before all others, as being to the manner born, and inheriting 
his broom, with all its concomitant advantages, from his 
father, or mother, as it might be. All his ideas, interests, and 
affections are centered in one spot of ground — the spot he 
sweeps, and has swept daily for the last twenty or thirty 
years, ever since it was bequeathed to him by his parent. The 
companion of his childhood, his youth, and his maturer age, is 
the post buttressed by the curb-stone at the corner of the 
street. To that post, indeed, he is a sort of younger brother. 
It has been his friend and support through many a stormy 
day and blustering night. It is the confidant of his hopes 



46 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

and his sorrows, and sometimes, too, his agent and cashier, 
for he has out a small basin in the top of it, where a passing 
patron may deposit a coin if he choose, under the guardian- 
ship of the broom, which, while he is absent for a short half- 
hour discussing a red herring and a crust for his dinner, leans 
gracefully against his friend the post, and draws the attention 
of a generous public to that as the deputy-receiver of the 
exchequer. Our professional friend has a profound know- 
ledge of character : he has studied the human face divine all 
his life, and can read at a glance, through the most rigid and 
rugged lineaments, the indications of benevolence or the want 
of it ; and he knows what aspect and expression to assume, in 
order to arouse the sympathies of a hesitating giver. He 
knows every inmate of every house in his immediate neigh- 
bourhood ; and not only that, but he knows their private 
history and antecedents for the last twenty years. He has 
watched a whole generation growing up under his broom, and 
he looks upon them all as so much material destined to en- 
hance the value of his estate. He is the humble pensioner of 
a dozen families : he wears the shoes of one, the stockings of 
another, the shirts of a third, the coats of a fourth, and so on; 
and he knows the taste of everybody's cookery, and the tem- 
per of everybody's cookmaid, quite as well as those who daily 
devour the one and scold the other. He is intimate with 
everybody's cat and everybody's dog, and will carry them 
home if he finds them straying. He is on speaking terms with 
everybody's servant-maid, and does them all a thousand kind 
offices, which are repaid with interest by surreptitious scraps 
from the larder, and jorums of hot tea in the cold wintry 
afternoons. On the other hand, if he knows so much, he is 
equally well known : he is as familiar to sight as the Monu- 
ment on Fish Street Hill to those who live opposite ; he is 
part and parcel of the street view, and must make a part of 
the picture whenever it is painted, or else it wont be like. 
You cannot realize the idea of meeting him elsewhere ; it 



CEOSSING-SWEEPEES. 47 

would be shocking to your nerves to think of it ; you would 
as soon think of seeing the Obelisk walking up Ludgate Hill, 
for instance, as of meeting him there — it could not be. Where 
he goes, when he leaves his station, you have not the least 
notion. He is there so soon as it is light in the morning, and 
till long after the gas is burning at night. He is a married 
man, of course, and his wife, a worthy helpmate, has no ob- 
jection to pull in the same boat with him. When Goggs has 
a carpet to beat — he beats all the carpets on his estate — Mrs. 
Goggs comes to console the post in his absence. She usually 
signalizes her advent by a desperate assault with the broom 
upon the whole length of the crossing : it is plain she never 
thinks that Goggs keeps the place clean enough, and so she 
brushes him a hint. Goggs has a weakness for beer, and more 
than once we have seen him asleep on a hot thirsty afternoon, 
too palpably under the influence of John Barleycorn to admit 
of a doubt, his broom between his legs, and his back against 
his abstinent friend the post. Somehow, whenever this hap- 
pens, -Mrs G. is sure to hear of it, and she walks him off 
quietly, that the spectacle of a sweeper overtaken may not 
bring a disgrace upon the profession; and then, broom in 
hand, she takes her stand, and does his duty for the re- 
mainder of the day. The receipts of the professional sweeper 
do not vary throughout the year so much as might be supposed. 
They depend very little on chance contributions : these, there 
is no doubt, fall off considerably, if they do not fail altogether, 
during a continuance of dry weather, when there is no need 
of the sweeper's services ; but the man is remunerated chiefly 
by regular donations from known patrons, who form his con- 
nection, and who, knowing that he must eat and drink be the 
weather wet or dry, bestow their periodical pittances ac- 
cordingly. 

No. 2. is the Morning Sweeper. — 'This is rather a knowing 
subject, one, at least, who is capable of drawing an inference 
from certain facts. There are numerous lines of route, both 



43 CURIOSITIES OP LOXDOX LIFE. 

north and south of the great centres of commerce, and all 
converging towards the city as their nucleus, which are tra- 
versed, morning and evening, for two or three consecutive 
hours, by bands of gentlemanly-looking individuals : clerks, 
book-keepers, foremen, business-managers, and such like re- 
sponsible functionaries, whose unimpeachable outer integu- 
ments testify to their regard for appearances. This current of 
respectability sets in towards the city at about half-past six in 
the morning, and continues its flow until just upon ten o'clock, 
when it may be said to be high- water. Though a large pro- 
portion of these agents of the world's traffic are daily borne to 
and from their destination in omnibuses, still the great majority, 
either for the sake of exercise or economy, are foot-passengers. 
For the accommodation of the latter, the crossing-sweeper 
stations himself upon the dirtiest portion of the route, and 
clearing a broad and convenient path ere the sun is out of bed, 
awaits the inevitable tide, which must flow, and which can 
hardly fail of bringing him some remuneration for his labour. 
If we are to judge from the fact, that along one line of route 
which we have been in the habit of traversing for several 
years, we have counted as many as fourteen of these morning 
sweepers in a march of little more than two miles, the specu- 
lation cannot be altogether unprofitable. In traversing the 
same route in the middle of the day, not three of the sweepers 
would be found at their post ; and the reason would be obvious 
endugh, since the streets are then comparatively deserted, 
being populous in the morning only, because they are so many 
short-cuts or direct thoroughfares from the suburbs to the city. 
The morning sweeper is generally a lively and active young 
fellow ; often a mere child, who is versed in the ways of 
London life, and who, knowing well the value of money, from 
the frequent want of it, is anxious to earn a penny by any 
honest means. Ten to one, he has been brought up in the 
country, and has been tutored by hard necessity, in this great 
wilderness of brick, to make the most of every hour, and of 



CEOSSING-SWEEPEES. 49 

every chance it may afford him. He will be found in the 
middle of the day touting for a job at the railway stations, to 
carry a portmanteau or to wheel a truck ; or he will be at 
Smithfield, helping a butcher to drive to the slaughter-house 
his bargain of sheep or cattle ; or in some livery-yard, curry- 
ing a horse or cleaning out a stable. If he can find nothing 
better to employ him, he will return to his sweeping in the 
evening, especially if it be summer-time, and should set in 
wet at five or six o'clock. When it is dark early, he knows 
that it won't pay to resume the broom ; commercial gentlemen 
are not particular about the condition of their Wellingtons 
when nobody can see to criticise their polish, and all they want 
is to exchange them for slippers as soon as possible. If we 
were to follow the career of this industrious fellow up to man- 
hood, we should in all probability find him occupying worthily 
a hard-working but decent and comfortable position in so- 
ciety. 

ISTo 3 is the Occasional Sweeper. — Now and then, in walking 
the interminable streets, one comes suddenly upon very ques- 
tionable shapes, which, however, we don't question, but walk 
on and account for them mythically if we can. Among these 
singular apparitions which at times have startled us, not a few 
have borne a broom in their hands, and appealed to us for a 
reward for services which, to say the best of them, were 
extremely doubtful. Now an elderly gentleman in silver 
spectacles, with pumps on his feet, and a roquelaure with a 
fur- collar over his shoulders, and an expression of unutterable 
anguish in his countenance, holds out his hand and bows his 
head as we pass, and groans audibly the very instant we are 
within earshot of a groan ; which is a distance of about ten 
inches in a London atmosphere. Now an old, old man, tali, 
meagre, and decrepit, with haggard eye and moonstruck visage, 
bares his aged head to the pattering rain — 

" Loose his beard and hoary hair 
Stream like a meteor to the troubled air." 



50 CTJEIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

He makes feeble and fitful efforts to sweep a pathway across 
the road, and the dashing cab pulls up suddenly just in time 
to save him from being hurled to the ground by the horse. 
Then he gives it up as a vain attempt, and leans, the model of 
despair, against the wall, and wrings his skeleton fingers in 
agony — when just as a compassionate matron is drawing the 
strings of her purse, stopping for her charitable purpose in a 
storm of wind and rain, the voice of the policeman is heard 
over her shoulder : " What, you are here at it again, old 
chap ? Well, I'm bio wed if I think anything '11 cure you. 
You'd better put up your pus, marm : if he takes your money, 
I shall take him to the station-us, that's all. Now, old chap — 
trot, trot, trot!" And away walks the old impostor, with a 
show of activity perfectly marvellous for his years, the police- 
man following close at his heels till he vanishes in the arched 
entry of a court. 

The next specimen is perhaps "a swell," out at elbows, a 
seedy and somewhat ragged remnant of a very questionable 
kind of gentility — a gentility engendered in " coal-holes," and 
" cider- cellars," in " shades," and such midnight " kens" — 
suckled with brandy-and-water and port- wine negus, and fed 
with deviled kidneys and toasted cheese. He has run to the 
end of his tether, is cleaned out even to the last disposable 
shred of his once well-stocked wardrobe ; and after fifty high- 
flying and desperate resolves, and twice fifty mean and sneak- 
ing devices to victimize those who have the misfortune to be 
assailable by him, " to this complexion he has come at last." 
He has made a track across the road, rather a slovenly dis- 
turbance of the mud than a clearance of it ; and having finished 
his performance in a style to indicate that he is a stranger to 
the business, being born to better things, he rears himself with 
front erect and arms a-kimbo, with one foot advanced after the 
most statuesque model, and exhibits a face of scornful brass to 
an unsympathizing world, before whom he stands a monument 
of neglected merit, and whom he doubtless expects to over- 



CBOSSING-SWEEPEKS. 51 

whelm with unutterable shame for their abominable treatment 
of a man and a brother — and a gentleman to boot. This sort 
of exhibition never lasts long, it being a kind of standing-dish 
for which the public have very little relish in this practical 
age. The " swell " sweeper generally subsides in a week or 
two, and vanishes from the stage, on which, however orna- 
mental, he is of very little use. 

The occasional sweeper is much oftener a poor countryman, 
who has wandered to London in search of emplojment, and, 
finding nothing else, has spent his last fourpence in the pur- 
chase of a besom, with which he hopes to earn a crust. Here 
his want of experience in town is very much against him. You 
may know him instantly from the habitue of the streets ; he 
plantshimself in the very thick and throng of the most crowded 
thoroughfare — the rapids, so to speak, of the human current — 
where he is of no earthly use, but, on the contrary, ver}^ much 
in the way, and where, while everybody wishes him at Jericho, 
he wonders that nobody gives him a copper ; or he undertakes 
impossible things, such as the sweeping of the whole width of 
Charing Cross from east to west, between the equestrian statue 
and Nelson's Pillar, where, if he sweep the whole, he can't 
collect, and if he collect, he can't sweep, and he breaks his 
heart and his back too in a fruitless vocation. He picks up 
experience in time ; but he is pretty sure to find a better 
trade before he has learned to cultivate that of a crossing- 
sweeper to perfection. — Many of these occasional hands are 
Hindoos, Lascars, or Orientals of some sort, whose dark skins, 
contrasted with their white and scarlet drapery, render them 
conspicuous objects in a crowd ; and from this cause they pro- 
bably derive an extra profit, as they can scarcely be passed by 
without notice. The sudden promotion of one of this class, 
who was hailed by the JSTepaulese ambassador, as he stood, 
broom in hand, in St. Paul's Churchyard, and engaged as 
dragoman to the embassy, will be in the recollection of the 
reader. It would be impossible to embrace in our category 

d 2 



52 CURIOSITIES OF LOKDOtf LITE. 

even a tithe of the various characters who figure in London as 
occasional sweepers. A broom is the last resort of neglected 
and unemployed industry, as well as of sudden and unfriended 
ill-fortune — the sanctuary to which a thousand victims fly 
from the fiends of want and starvation. The broken-down 
tradesman, the artisan out of work, the decayed gentleman, 
the ruined gambler, the starving scholar,— each and all we 
have indubitably seen brooming the muddy ways for the chance 
of a halfpenny or a penny. It is not very long since we were 
addressed in Water- street, Blackfriars, by a middle-aged man 
in a garb of seedy black, who handled his broom like one who 
played upon a strange instrument, and who, wearing the 
words Pauper et pedester written on a card stuck in his hat- 
band, told us, in good colloquial Latin, a tale of such horri- 
fying misery and destitution, that we shrink from recording it 
here. "We must pass on to the, next on our list, who is — 

!No. 4, the Liicus-a-non, or a sweeper who never sweeps. — 
This fellow is a vagabond of the first-water, or of the first- 
mud rather. His stock in trade is an old worn-out broom- 
stump, which he has shouldered for these seven years past, 
and with which he has never displaced a pound of soil in 
the whole period. He abominates work with such a crowning 
intensity, that the very pretence of it is a torture to him. He 
is a beggar without a beggar s humbleness ; and a thief, more- 
over, without a thief's hardihood. He crawls lazily about the 
public ways, and begs under the banner of his broom, which 
constitutes his protection against the police. He will collect 
alms at a crossing which he would not cleanse to save himself 
from starvation ; or he will take up a position at one which a 
morning sweeper has deserted for the day, and glean the sorry 
remnants of another man's harvest. He is as insensible to 
shame as to the assaults of the weather ; he will watch you 
picking your way through the mire over which he stands sen- 
tinel, and then impudently demand payment for the perform- 
ance of a function which he never dreams of exercising; or 



CROSSING- SWEEPEES. 53 

he will stand in your path, in the middle of the splashy chan- 
nel, and pester you with whining supplications, while he kicks 
the mire over your garments, and bars your passage to the 
pavement. He is worth nothing, not even the short notice 
we have taken of him, or the trouble of a whipping, which he 
ought to get, instead of the coins that he contrives to extract 
from the heedless generosity of the public. 

No. 5 is the Sunday Sweeper. — This neat, dapper, and 
cleanly variety of the genus besom, is usually a young fellow, 
who, pursuing some humble and ill-paid occupation during the 
week, ekes out his modest salary by labouring with the broom 
on the Sunday. He has his regular " place of worship," one 
entrance of which he monopolizes every Sabbath morning. 
Long before the church-going bell rings out the general invi- 
tation, he is on the spot, sweeping a series of paths all radia- 
ting from the church or chapel door to the different points of 
the compass. The business he has cut out for himself is no 
sinecure ; he does his work so effectually, that you marvel at 
the achievement, and doubt if the floor of your dwelling be 
cleaner. Then he is himself as clean as a new pin, and wears 
a flower in his button-hole, and a smile on his face, and thanks 
you so becomingly, and bows so gracefully, that you cannot 
help wishing him a better office ; and of course, to prove the 
sincerity of your wish, you pay him at a better rate. When 
the congregation are all met, and the service is commenced, he 
is religious enough, or knowing enough, to walk stealthily in, 
and set himself upon the poor bench, where he sits quietly, 
well behaved, and attentive to the end ; for which very proper 
conduct he is pretty sure to meet an additional reward during 
the exit of the assembly, as they defile past him at the gate 
when all is over. In the afternoon, he is off to the immediate 
precinct of some park or public promenade ; and selecting a well- 
frequented approach to the general rendezvous, will cleanse 
and purify the crossing or pathway in his own peculiar and 
elaborate style, vastly to the admiration of the gaily- dressed 



54 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON" LIFE. 

pedestrians, and it is to be supposed, to his own profit. Be- 
sides this really clever and enterprising genius, there is a 
numerous tribe of a very different description, who must sally 
forth literally by the thousand every Sunday morning when 
the weather is fine, and who take possession of every gate, 
stile, and wicket, throughout the wide-spread suburban dis- 
tricts of the metropolis in all directions. They are of both 
sexes and all ages ; and go where you will, it is impossible to 
go through a gate, or get over a stile, without the proffer of 
their assistance, for which, of course, you are expected to pay, 
whether vou use it or not. Some of these fellows have a 
truly ruffianly aspect, and waylay you in secluded lanes and 
narrow pathways ; and carrying a broom-stump, which looks 
marvellously like a bludgeon, no doubt often levy upon the 
apprehensions of the timorous pedestrian a contribution which 
his charity would not be so blind as to bestow. The whole of 
this tribe constitute a monster- nuisance, which ought to be 
abated by the exertions of the police. 

Isb. 6 are the deformed, maimed, and crippled sweepers, 
of whom there is a considerable number constantly at 
work, and, to do them justice, they appear by no means 
the least energetic of the brotherhood. Kature frequently 
compensates bodily defects by the bestowal of a vigor- 
ous temperament. The sweeper of one leg or one arm, or the 
poor cripple who, but for the support of his broom, would be 
crawling on all-fours, is as active, industrious, and efficient as 
the best man on the road ; and he takes a pride in the proof 
of his prowess, surveying his work when it is finished with a 
complacency too evident to escape notice. He considers, per- 
haps, that he has an extra claim upon the public on account of 
the afflictions he has undergone, and we imagine that such 
claim must be pretty extensively allowed : we know no other 
mode of accounting for the fact, that now and then one of 
these supposed maimed or halt performers turns out to be an 
impostor, who, considering a broken limb, or something tanta- 



CB.OSSING-SWEEPERS. 55 

mount to that, essential to the success of his broom, concocts 
an impromptu fracture or amputation to serve his purpose. 
Some few years ago, a lively, sailor-looking fellow appeared as 
a one-handed sweeper in a genteel square on the Surrey side 
of the water. The right sleeve of his jacket waved emptily 
in the wind, but he flourished his left arm so vigorously in the 
air, and completed the gyration of his weapon, when it stuck 
fast in the mud, so manfully by the impulse of his right leg, 
that he became quite a popular favourite, and won " copper 
opinions from all sorts of men," to say nothing of a shower of 
sixpences from the ladies in the square. Unfortunately for 
the continuance of his prosperity, a gentleman intimate with 
one of his numerous patronesses, while musing in the twilight 
at an upstairs window, saw the fellow enter his cottage after 
his day's work, release his right arm from the durance in 
which it had lain beneath his jacket for ten or twelve hours, 
and immediately put the power of the long-imprisoned limb to 
the test by belabouring his wife with it. That same night 
every tenant in the square was made acquainted with the dis- 
guised arm, and the use for which it was reserved, and the 
ingenious performer was the next morning delivered over to 
the police. The law, however, allows a man to dispose of his 
limbs as he chooses; and as the delinquent was never proved 
to have said that he had lost an arm ; and as he urged that one 
arm being enough for the profession he had embraced, he con- 
sidered he had a right to reserve the other until he had occa- 
sion for it — he was allowed to go about his business. 

No. 7, and the last in our classification, are the Female 
Sweepers. — It is singular, that among these we rarely if ever 

« 

meet with young women, properly so called. The calling of 
a crossing-sweeper, so far as it is carried on by females, is almost 
entirely divided between children or young girls, and women 
above the age of forty. The children are a very wandering 
and fickle race, rarely staying for many weeks together in a 
single spot. This love of change must militate much against 
their success, a3 they lose the advantage of the charitable in- 



56 CTJEIOSITIES OE LONDON LIFE. 

terest they would excite in persons accustomed to meet them 
regularly in their walks. They are not, however, generally 
dependent upon the produce of their own labours for a living, 
being, for the most part, the children of parents in extremely 
low circumstances, who send them forth with a broom to pick 
up a few halfpence to assist them in the dail} provision for the 
family. The older women, on the other hand, of whom there 
is a pretty stout staff scattered throughout the metropolis, are 
too much impressed with the importance of adhering con- 
stantly to one spot, capriciously to change their position. 
They would dread to lose a connection they have been many 
years in forming, and they will even cling to it after it has 
ceased to be a thoroughfare by the opening of a new route, 
unless they can discover the direction their patrons have taken. 
"When a poor old creature, who has braved the rheumatism for 
thirty years or so, finds she can stand it no longer, we have 
known her induct a successor into her office bv attending her 
for a fortnight or more, and introducing the new comer to the 
friendly regard of her old patrons. The exceptions to these 
two classes of the old and the very juvenile, will be found to 
consist mostly of young widows left with the charge of an 
infant family more or less numerous. Some few of these there 
are, and they meet with that considerate reception from the 
public which their distressing cases demand. The spectacle of 
a young mother, with an infant on one arm muffled up from 
the driving rain, while she plies a broom single-handed, is one 
which never appeals in vain to a London public. With a keen 
eye for imposture, and a general inclination to suspect it, the 
Londoner has yet compassion, and coin, too, to bestow upon a 
deserving object. It is these poor widows who, by rearing 
their orphaned offspring to wield the broom, supplement the 
ranks of the professional sweepers. They become the heads of 
sweeping families, who in time leave the maternal wing, and 
shift for themselves. We might point to one whom we have 
encountered almost daily for the last ten years. In 1841, she 
was left a widow with three small children, the eldest under 



CROSSING- SWEEPEKS. 57 

four, and the youngest in arms. Clad in deep mourning, she 
took up a position at an angular crossing of a square, and was 
allowed to accommodate the two elder children upon some 
matting spread upon the steps of a door. With the infant in 
one arm, she plied her broom with the other, and held out a 
small white hand for the reception of such charity as the 
passers-by might choose to bestow. The children grew up 
strong and hearty, in spite of their exposure to the weather at 
all seasons. All three of them are at the present moment 
sweepers in the same line of route, at no great distance from 
the mother, who, during the whole period, has scarcely aban- 
doned her post for a single day. Ten years' companionship 
with sun and wind, and frost and rain, have doubled her appa- 
rent age, but her figure still shows the outline of gentility, and 
her face yet wears the aspect and expression of better days. 
We have frequently met the four returning home together in 
the deepening twilight, the elder boy carrying the four brooms 
strapped together on his shoulder. 

The sweeper does better at holiday seasons than at any other 
time. If he is blessed with a post for a companion, he decks 
it with a flower or sprig of green, and sweeps a clear stage 
round it, which is said to be a difficult exploit, though we have 
never tried it. At Christmas, he expects a double fee from 
his old patrons, and gets it too, and a substantial slice of 
plum-pudding from the old lady in the first floor opposite. 
He decks the entrance to his walk with laurel and holly, in 
honour of the day, and of his company, who walk under a 
triumphal arch of green, got up for that occasion only. He is 
sure of a good collection on that day, and he goes home with 
his pocket heavy and his heart light, and treats himself to a 
pot of old ale, warmed over a fire kindled with his old broom, 
and sipped sparingly to the melody of a good old song about 
the good old times, when crossing-sweepers grew rich, and be- 
queathed fortunes to their patrons. 

d 3 



58 



SAM SUNDRIES AND HIS CONGENERS. 



Sam Sundries — to give him the name hy which he is univer- 
sally known among his neighbours — lives in the Bagnigge 
Wells Road. He keeps a shop, the physiognomy of which, 
being of a very unpretentious, bottle-blue colour, is anything 
but prepossessing. Bottles of every known form of configu- 
ration, with their concave bottoms uniformly ranged against 
every pane, fill up the entire window ; and the very little 
light which can succeed in struggling through the prostrate 
files, reveals to you within a succession of shelves, range 
above range, still covered with bottles, among which, however, 
you may discern whole rows of pickling-jars, preserve and 
jelly- pots, and every species of crockery and corkable glass 
applicable to the business of the dispensing- room or the 
kitchen. Bottles, however, are but a small part of his wares 
— the ostensible head and front of his commercial speculations. 
The whole domain of Sam Sundries is a warehouse or store- 
yard, crammed to excess with the disjecta membra of past re- 
alities. Bricks, pantiles, slates, chimney-pots, wainscottings, 
doors, windows, shop-fronts, sashes, counters, blocks of stone, 
bars of metal, rolls of lead, iron railings, gateways, stoves, 
knockers, scrapers, pipes and funnels, copper pots, pans, and 
boilers, and everything which has a name or a use, and many 
things which have neither, are stored in rich and rusty abun- 
dance in the ample yards and sheds in the rear of his residence. 



SAM SUNDRIES AND HIS CONGENERS. 59 

He will buy anything and everything which the regular 
dealers have rejected — from the roof of an old house to its 
rotten kitchen-floor, and from the wardrobe of the master to 
the perquisite bones and grease of the scullion- wench. Be- 
sides a good connection among the medical practitioners of his 
district, whom he supplies with phials at a fraction under the 
market-price, he has intimate relations with Monmouth Street 
and Rag Fair — the denizens of which localities clear off his 
collections of u toggery " at their periodical visits. His depot 
is the daily resort of little speculating builders and repairers ; 
and he reaps a considerable profit by the ready sale to cheap 
contractors of an infinite variety of materials which it is pos- 
sible to work up again in the construction of a new edifice. 
He has a standing agreement with the artists' colourmen, to 
whom he scrupulously transfers all the old and well- seasoned 
oak and mahogany panelling that comes in his way, and by 
whom it is scientifically primed and prepared for the artists' 
use. 

He is, moreover, a builder in a small way himself. In this 
department he is what the Americans would call a smart man. 
Having a sharp eye for prospective advantages, he is often un- 
expectedly discovered to be the proprietor of a little square 
patch of land lying directly in the track of a new suburban 
street, where he has run up a wooden hut, tenanted by an 
Irish labourer, and which has to be purchased at a swingeing 
price before the new buildings can be completed. He has a 
dozen or two of nondescript cottages — queer-looking compi- 
lations of old bricks and older timber, perched upon " spec." 
in the precise path of the advancing improvements in the dif- 
ferent quarters. He constitutes himself not the pioneer, but 
the stumb' in g- block in the march of civilisation. He is part 
and parcel of the rubbish which has to be moved out of the 
way. His erections are built up to be pulled down — the 
sooner the better for him ; but his speculations of this nature 
have a disastrous effect upon the public, through the introduc- 



60 CURIOSITIES OP LONDON LIFE. 

tion of vermin not to be named into new buildings — his 
colonised old bricks being invariably worked np in the party 
walls, probably to save the trouble and expense of carting 
them away. 

Though possessed of a vast amount of a rather equivocal 
description of property, Sam has but little ready money at his 
command; and the reason is, that much of what is refuse in other 
men's eyes is treasure in his, and he constantly converts his 
cash into stock, being tempted by the famous bargains which 
in his line of business are always to be had. "With a floating 
capital of some " seven pun' ten," he considers himself well 
furnished for the market ; and if any sudden emergency ne- 
cessitates a greater outlay, he gives his bill, and honours it duly 
when presented. 

Arrived at your dwelling in the pursuit of his vocation — 
on the eve of the removal- day, we shall say, when you are in 
a hopeless smotherment with rubbish of all kinds — it is 
astonishing to witness the ease and celerity with which he 
sorts, arranges, and values the heterogeneous mass you are 
anxious to get rid of. He gets through a gross of bottles in 
a few minutes, rejecting the starred culprits almost instinc- 
tively, and ranking the sound ones in rows, ticks them off 
at so much per dozen. Boots, shoes, boxes, hampers, old hats, 
old clothes, old books and papers, deal-boards, and abandoned 
utensils of every sort, are all despatched with equal ce- 
lerity; and having informed you that " thirty bob is his 
money for the whole bilin' — take 'em or leave 'em" — a 
sentence, by the way, from which you could no more move 
him than you could transplant Niagara to Spitalrlelds — he 
politely insinuates that he will, if it is any accommodation to 
you, remove the broken glass into the bargain, which, as he 
is known to deal very largely in that material, is not greatly 
to be wondered at. 

Sam Sundries is considered a substantial tradesman, and 
' warm man" by his compeers in his immediate neighbour- 



SAM SUNDRIES AND HIS CONGENERS. 61 

hood, and piques himself not a little upon that respectability, 
which, having achieved for himself, he proudly regards as his 
most valuable possession. Though he and his whole family 
live up to the eyes in lumber of every imaginable sort, and 
may be seen of a hot summer day dining together from a pound 
of apocryphal sausages, forked out of the frying-pan, and 
caught upon a hunch of bread, yet the pride of independence 
gleams in every eye, from the young bottle-imp who rattles 
shot in oily phials the livelong day, to the indefatigable mother 
of the seven Sundries, who to the care of her numerous family 
adds the service of the shop. 

Sam has a host of imitators in the various districts in and 
around London, of the majority of whom it may be said that, 
lacking his spirit of speculation and his command of a species 
of natural arithmetic, which together have been the founda- 
tion of his success — for he is utterly devoid of education — 
they cut but a sorry figure upon small and uncertain gains. 
Their shops abound in the neighbourhood of Saffron Hill and 
the Cowgate, and in the whole of the back-way track that 
leads from Liquorpond Street westward, and in a hundred 
similar localities besides. Many of them are professedly 
brokers; but the last page of the auctioneer's catalogue is 
their vade-mecum; and they may be seen straggling into the 
sale- room at the termination of the day's business, when the 
regular professional brokers are leaving, with the view of 
monopolising the few last lots of sundries at their own price. 
In this laudable purpose, however, they are often defeated by 
the presence of one or more sturdy old dowager cook or house- 
keeper, or owner of a lodging-house, who having sat doggedly 
through the whole sale without bidding, elevates her sonorous 
voice at last in favour of the entire shoal of pots, pipkins, 
pans, and pickle-jars, which are knocked down to her at their 
full value, to the rage and consternation of her grim and 
aggravated rivals. 

As the current of business does not flow very briskly in the 



62 CTTBIOSITIES OF LONDON" LITE. 

narrow, tortuous, and poverty-stricken thoroughfares, where 
necessity has compelled these dealers in odds-and-ends to 
locate their shops, they find themselves compelled to sally 
forth in pursuit of that traffic which in some shape or other 
is indispensable to their existence. Having no very profound 
or scrupulous convictions on the score of morality to contend 
with, their invention and ingenuity have free scope ; and many 
and various are the machinations and contrivances by which 
they manage to recommend their services to certain sections 
of the public. A small hand-bill, not four inches square — 
both paper and print being of the last-dying-speech-and-con- 
fession quality — is lying upon our desk as we write. It was 
picked up in the area, where it had been dropped for the 
special information of the servant-girl ; and it instructs all 
whom it may concern, and female domestics in particular, that 

John G , of Lane, Clerkenwell, " gives the best 

price for bones, bottles, rags, and kitchen-stuff, all sorts of 
wearing apparel, china, glass, and every description of pro- 
perty whatever, without trouble or inconvenience ;" and further, 
that the said John G " may be relied upon in all circum- 
stances." Another, issued by a member of the same fraternity, 
copies of which are plentifully circulated at the approach of 
every recurring quarter-day, and which is palpably intended 
for the grave consideration of " heads of houses," who may 
be contemplating a march by moonlight, enlarges upon the 

immense convenience proffered by Ezra L , "who has 

money at command to any amount for the especial accommoda- 
tion of his friends, and who will take charge of their securities, 
of whatever kind, at any hour — advancing the needful sum 
before removal." These disinterested announcements, there 
can be little doubt, procure them favour and encouragement 
from certain sections of the community, and may go far to 
account for the abnormal increase in the amount of tradesmen's 
bills, so mysterious to unsophisticated housekeepers ; and also 
for the sudden abandonment and dismantling of many a well- 



SAM SUNDRIES AND HIS CONGENERS. 63 

furnished house, to the alarm and consternation of the de- 
frauded landlord. But these are bold speculations, contrived 
and carried into execution by the choice spirits of the class — 
the underhand Napoleons of industiy — and are far above the 
genius and enterprise of the great majority. Honesty is a 
policy with some, who to their profession as general dealers 
add the exercise of some useful craft, which, when there is no 
demand for it at home, they carry forth into the suburbs, 
lifting up their voices in the streets, or making application at 
the doors and areas. Thus if your parlour window has a 
broken pane, and you do not immediately send for the glazier, 
it is odds but one of these travelling professionals knocks at 
your door, and offers to do the necessary repairs at five-and- 
twentyper cent, less than the trade price ; which, having con- 
sented to, you find, from the quality of the glass he has in- 
serted, is no bargain after all. Others mend cane-chairs, and 
will weave a new seat in the course of an hour and a half, at 
the charge of ninepence, including the materials. Some are 
unlicensed hawkers of china and glass ; but they evade the 
penalty pronounced by the act of parliament by refusing to 
take money for their goods, which they barter for any species 
of domestic refuse, or cast-off apparel. Of these there are a 
very numerous class who perambulate periodically a regular 
beat, and who keep up an extensive connection in the pro- 
secution of this kind of barter. Not a few of them are as- 
sisted by their wives, who divide the labour with them, taking 
alternate journeys. The co-operation of the wife is found of 
considerable advantage in this department of trade, as by her 
means a greater degree of familiarity with the patrons of this 
kind of commerce, who are invariably females, is established 
than could ever be accomplished by the cajoleries of the hus- 
band alone. When he starts out upon his expedition, he 
carries a large basket on his head and a capacious sack slung 
upon his shoulders. He takes his silent way along the ac- 
customed track, never opening his lips in public, but calling 



64 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDO]*" LIFE. 

privately upon his several patrons. " Anything in my way, 
to-day, marm?" is his modest appeal. If a negative is re- 
turned, he loses no time, hut vanishes at once. Should, how- 
ever, the slightest symptom of hesitation be manifested, down 
drops the basket upon the door-step, and the glittering dis- 
play of glasses, cruets, bowls, basins, jugs, and dishes, soon 
operates a decisive effect. The contents of his basket are 
gradually exchanged for the exuviae of the various members 
of the several families on his list, or for such household requi- 
sites of a portable description, which with him comprises a 
wide range, as long service has divested of their original in- 
tegrity and respectability of appearance — all of which go into 
the bag, very much, there is scarcely reason to remark, to the 
advantage of the peripatetic dealer, who, in reverting to the 
elementary practices of commerce, becomes necessarily from 
his position his own appraiser and umpire. The wares he 
carries about with him for disposal are uniformly the defective 
and rejected productions of the potteries and glass-houses, 
and are purchased in large quantities, at a very low rate, for 
this peculiar description of trade. 

Sometimes a brace of speculators in sundries will sally forth 
together on what is technically termed the " pick up." Their 
object is to buy — no matter what — with a view to around 
profit. One of their favourite plans is to call at every open 
door, professing to give a high price for bottles and old clothes. 
The farther they get from Eow Bells the more liberal become 
their offers, until when fairly out in the country, they boldly 
offer three shillings a dozen for bottles which your wine- 
merchant sells you for two. But, in fact, bottles they don't 
want ; and, what is more than that, bottles they won't have. 
The following scene, detailed by an eye-witness, exemplifies 
their modus operandi : — 

Scene — A Wayside Farm. Enter Two Tramps, with Sacks on their 

Shoulders. 

First Tramp. Yah, yah! Now, ladies, bring out your 



SAM STTNDKIES AND HIS CONGENERS. 65 

bottles and old clo'es ! Three shillins a dozen for bottles ; 
now's your time ! Bring out your old clo'es ! Three shillins 
a dozen — bottles, ho ! bottles ! bottle — ottle — ottle — ottle 
— ottles. With a gurgling noise like the eruption of double- stout 
from an uncorked bottle of Guinness. .] 

Second Tramp. Yah— ah — ah! Now for the old hats 
and bonnets ! Never mind the dust ! Now for the old 
coats and gownds, pangty loons and gayters — hainythink ! 
Eummage 'em out — now's your time, ladies ! 

Farmer's Wife. {Calling from the casement.) Here, come 
in, my good man ; I've got a mort o bottles. 

Scene changes to Farm-house Kitchen. The Goodwife drags forth a 
couple of dozen of Black Bottles, and ranks them on the Moor. 

First Tramp. Now, look alive, Ned. Go over them there 
bottles while I looks at the toggery. "Where's the old clo'es, 
marm ? 

Farmer's Wife. Clothes ! I got no clothes to sell as I know 
of: I haven't a sed nothin' about no clothes. 

First Tramp. I daresay you can look up a few, marm. 
Can't buy all bottles and no clo'es : must be some o' both sorts, 
marm. Bottles is very well, but must be some clo'es. 

Farmer's Wife. Well, let me see ; there be an old coat I do 
think my maist(T ha' done wi' : I'll go and see. Setty down 
a miimit. [Exit, and returns in a few minutes with a coat and 
pair of pantaloons^ Here be a coat and trousers ; what be 'e 
gwain to gimmy for they? — they baint very hard done by 
you see. 

First Tramp. Let's have a look at 'em. Come, I'll give 
you a shillin for the two — eightpence for the coat, and four- 
pence for the pants. 

Farmer's Wife. Eightpence for theas coat ! Whoy, a's wuth 
a half-crown, anybody's money ! 

First Tramp. Lor' love your 'ansome face ! How d'ye think 



66 ctjeiosities of London life. 

I can give half- a- crown for that there coat when I'm a goin 
to give three shillin a dozen for bottles ? — 'taint in reason ! 

Second Tramp. {In an audille whisper.) These is thunderm' 
good bottles, Bill ! 

Farmer's Wife. Well, let me see; that '11 make seven 
shillings altogether. "Well, well, I s'pose yon mnsthave 'em. 

First Tramp. Here, Ned, clap them togs in the bag. I may 
as well pay you for 'em at once, marrn. \_Pays her a shilling, 
while Ned sacks the clothes. ~\ 

Farmer's Wife. But the bottles ! B'aint ee gwain to pay 
for the bottles ? 

First Tramp. Oh, sartinly, marm. But you see, lor' love 
you ! we don't car bottles in a bag : we must go and fetch a 
hamper for them. We'll pay of course, when we fetches 'em 
away. \_Fxeunt Tramps — manet Farmer's Wife in a cloud. ] 

The good woman keeps the bottles waiting for the hamper 
so long as she has any faith in its arrival, but as that consum- 
mation is delayed from hour to hour, she at length conies by 
degrees to appreciate the true nature of the transaction. 

The modes of cheating are as various as those of getting a 
livelihood. The above is but one sample out of thousands of 
the manner in which the simple are daily mystified by the 
sharp-witted knaves of the metropolis. 

With the exception of some few successful examples who, 
like Sam Sundries, have got the world under their feet, the 
dealers of this class occupy a position midway between the 
keepers of rag-shops, who beneath the auspices of a black doll 
suspended aloft over the doorway, keep open-house for the 
reception of bones, rags, and grease, and those connoisseurs 
in mahogany and French polish — the furniture brokers. They 
carry on a branch of commerce which the necessities of a 
numerous section of society have called into being. In their 
dark and dingy shops and sheds the poor labourer and scantily- 
paid artisan finds, at a price commensurate with his means, 



SAM SUNDRIES AND HIS CONGENERS. 67 

the various utensils and appliances of such humble house- 
keeping as he can afford to maintain ; and but for some such 
a market as their obscure depositories supply, thousands of 
our fellow-creatures would be reduced to shift without the 
domestic conveniences of life. It is their task to rescue from 
the fire and the axe, and from the very jaws of destruction, 
the worn-out and abandoned implements of housewifery and 
comfort, contemptuously cast forth from the dwellings of the 
upper and middle classes, and to refit and re-establish them 
for the accommodation of the very poor. In the exercise of 
this vocation they are found to manifest a degree of ingenuity 
and perseverance worthy of a better reward than it sometimes 
obtains, seeing that the parties with whom they have mostly 
to do are even more indigent than themselves. That as a 
class they are frequentl}' brought into very intimate relations 
with the police force, and find their wanderings confined for a 
season to the limited area of a prison cell, does not invalidate 
the fact, that there are among them many honest and worthy 
individuals, to whom the world is indebted for much pains- 
taking and ill-requited labour. 



68 



THE TOBHELLA PEDLEK. 



The trade in second-hand umbrellas is one which, is very 
industriously pursued in every part of the metropolis, although 
in seasons of dry and fair weather no trace or indication of it 
may be visible to the most experienced observer. The fall of 
the barometer, however, lures the hawkers from their hiding- 
places, and, simultaneously with the pattering descent of the 
first smart shower of rain, they may be beheld, if not 
numerous as frogs on the windward bank of a dry pond, yet 
vocal as their saltatory prototypes, and, like them, rejoicing in 
the blessed dews of heaven. In them the forgetful pedestrian, 
who has left his umbrella behind him, encounters accommoda- 
ting friends, ready to dispense a shelter at any price, from a 
" tanner" to a "bull," as they phrase it, or from sixpence to a 
crown-piece. In the neighbourhood of some sheltered court 
or covered archway, where the crowd have rushed to covert 
from the rattling storm, the umbrella pedler takes his stand — 
his back to the breeze, his battered frock buttoned to the chin, 
his blucher-booted feet firmly planted on the slushy pavement, 
and his burly figure effectually shielded from the assaults of 
the tempest beneath the ample dome of gingham upheld in 
his sturdy fist. "With a dozen or two of serviceable umbrellas 
of every possible colour and material gathered up under his left 
arm, he stands erect and scornful of the inclement sky ; and 



THE TTMBEELLA PEDLEE. 69 

as you shrink from the driving sleet or peppering hail, jostling 
uncomfortably with " damp strangers" beneath the crowded 
covert, he pits his patience against yours, pretty sure to con- 
quer in the end, unless the heavens prove adverse, and the 
beams of the returning sunshine put his mercantile prospects 
to night. He is an admirable prophet of the weather, and 
knows far better than did Murphy when the clouds intend, to 
drop fatness. When you see him emerging, stock in hand, 
from some malodorous alley in the purlieus of Clare Market or 
Drury Lane, you may set it down as a matter of certainty, 
whatever be the promise of the hour, that he has derived 
from some mysterious source or other, infallible indications of 
impending moisture, and that he is prepared to take advantage 
of it. A sudden change to wet occurring at eight or nine 
o'clock on a summer's evening is a special providence in his 
favour, adding fifty per cent, to the value of his goods, and 
insuring a certain and rapid market for them. He is off at 
such a crisis without loss of time to Yauxhall, or Cremorne, 
or some other popular resort of out-of-door entertainment, 
where thousands of callow Cockneys, who piously believe that 
to carry an umbrella is to invite wet weather, are to be found 
fluttering in their Sunday's best, and in the precise condition 
he would have them for the encouragement of trade. The 
disgorgement of Exeter Hall after a May meeting or an 
Oratorio by Handel, during a summer storm, is a harvest 
which he is sure to be on the spot to reap. Wherever, indeed, 
a crowd is caught in the rain he is present to catch the crowd, 
and on such occasions it need hardly be said, is pretty sure to 
be well received and well remunerated. 

When fine weather has fairly set in, our moist friend disap- 
pears from his accustomed stations, and if, as it ought to be, 
his stock be greatly diminished, he has now the task of replen- 
ishing it to perform against the return of the wet season. 
With this view he makes the tour of London on a principle 
peculiar to himself: avoiding all the main and business 



70 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

thoroughfares, he penetrates into the back slums and private- 
door districts, where, in a monotonous voice, reminding one of 
the magician's crv in the tale of Aladdin and the Wonderful 
Lamp — a voice intended for the ears of servant-girls and pecu- 
lating servitors — he bawls the interesting announcement: 
" Sixpence for any ole humrellar !" Now as he sells hundreds 
of umbrellas in the course of the year at sixpence a piece, 
it is hardly to be expected that this announcement is to be 
taken in its literal sense. It means, in fact, that he will give 
sixpence for an article that he approves of. If you offer him 
a dilapidated machine, he will prove to you logically enough 
that, so far from being a (wh)ole umbrelia, it is only a portion 
of one, and is therefore onh' worth a part of the price. He 
will buy it, however, at his own valuation, be it what it may, 
as he has ample means in store for supplying all deficiencies. 
If the relic in question be that of a genuine manufacture, with 
ribs of actual whalebone, and not the substitute of blackened 
cane, he will hardly let it escape him unless you are really 
inordinatj in your demand. Umbrellas whose sticks and ribs 
are of iron are his utter abomination, and he tells you to bring 
them to him red-hot; he " haves nuffin to do wi' them sort 
without the chill took orf." It is not always that he rjays for 
his purchases in ready-money : he carries with him on his 
rounds a dozen or two of tidy little parasols, not too large for 
a servant-girl to smuggle out of the house in her pocket, in 
cases where the mistress forbids her domestics the use of such 
vanities. When he has overhauled the goods he means to buy, 
"Lookee here, my dear," says he, "if 3^ou got a mind to gi' 
me a bob (that's a shillin you know) and these here three or 
four bits o' humrellars, you shall have an ansome parry saul fit 
for arra lady in town, and take your chice." With that he 
unfolds his tempting display of bright coloured sunshades, 
and the bargain is only delayed till the dazzled abigail has 
fixed her hesitating selection. 

When he is sufficiently provided against a rainy day, and 



THE TTMBRELLA PEDLEK. 71 

the wet weather, as is sometimes the case, does not set in to 
suit his convenience, he sets out on a repairing campaign. 
Furnished with a canvas or leathern bag strapped round his 
waist, and well supplied with ferrules, handles, tips, and all 
the little etcetera that go to the construction and reparation 
of umbrellas, together with a few simple tools, he perambu- 
lates the various suburbs and quiet streets of the capital, cry- 
ing at the top of his voice : "Humrellars to mend !" His inge- 
nuity in the repair of any disorder incidental to the constitu- 
tion of these useful articles is really marvellous. Your old 
companion in travel shall have had his brazen nose knocked 
off — shall have been actually turned inside out by the blus- 
tering assault of Boreas — shall have had the whole of his 
eight ribs wrenched from his spine, besides sundry other minor 
injuries — and shall yet emerge from the hands of this peripa- 
tetic bone-setter restored to his pristine integrity; hale, hearty, 
strong and serviceable as ever — and all for the small charge 
of "such a thing as tenpence." 

In addition to what may be called his independent trade, 
carried on on his own account, he is bound by certain contracts 
to the keepers of retail umbrella and parasol shops. These 
contracts are not to him of a very profitable description : he 
has undertaken to do all the repairs required to be done — to 
medicate the wounds and fractures of each individual sufferer 
at a price comparable only to that at which a parish doctor is 
remunerated for attendance upon workhouse patients. Two 
shillings per dozen is the liberal allowance generally paid by 
the shopkeeper to the travelling artisan for the repair of um- 
brellas and parasols, lumping them all together, irrespective of 
the nature of the injury to be repaired. Kew coverings of 
course are not included, and the shopkeeper supplies such new 
handles as may be necessary : all the rest is furnished by the 
repairer. Some few of the more liberal dealers allow half-a- 
crown a dozen, which seeing that sixpence is the lowest charge 
ever made for a single job to the public, and that the generality 



72 CTJEIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

of cases cost the customer a shilling, they can very well afford 

to do. 

Sometimes a member of this fraternity will lay by his um- 
brellas and repairing-kit for a season, and betake himself to an 
analogous pursuit in the sale of walking-sticks. In carrying 
out this branch of his profession, he becomes the subject of a 
temptation to which he is not always superior. True he is a 
"natty " hand at a walking-stick; and though he may not be, 
like Sir Plume, critically correct "in the nice conduct of a 
clouded cane," he is an admirable judge of the quality of 
canes in general, from the common chair-bottomed bamboo to 
the costlr amber-coloured [Malacca. The perfection of his 
judgment in this particular has indeed been the source of the 
moral declension above hinted at. In his purchases of second- 
hand umbrellas, or perhaps in his barterings with serving- 
maids at o-entlemen's back-doors, he meets occasionally with 
specimens of which the stick is a good partridge-cane. This, 
truth compels us to say, he invariably extracts ^substituting a 
common one of beech), and dressing it up as a walking-stick, 
readily disposes of it as such at the price of a shilling or 
eighteenpence — the regular price for such a cane being from 
half-a-crown to three- and-sixpence. The purchaser soon 
makes the agreeable discovery that he has parted with his 
money to no purpose, and that his bargain, like most bargains, 
is good for nothing — the cane proving unsound, and snapping 
short at about a foot from the lower extremity. He sees when 
it is too late that his new walking- stick had done service as 
the rod of an umbrella — that it had been excavated at the part 
where it has now broken, for the insertion of the spring — 
that the wood had become rotten from the "moisture collected 
there, and had consequently given way upon the first pressure. 
It is impossible to detect the imposture by examination be- 
fore purchase — the cavity being cleverly filled with an imita- 
tivec omposition, and the whole subsequently varnished over. 

Not a few of the ambulatory umbrella -merchants and men- 



THE "UMBRELLA PEDLER. 73 

ders are Jews, who are at all times ready and willing to 
exchange their wares or their skill for any portable species of 
marketable commodities. The writer many years ago took 
lessons in Hebrew from a travelling umbrella -mender, who 
read into such English as he was master of — he being by 
birth a Pole — any part of the Old Testament with the 
utmost ease and rapidity. He did the same with equal 
fluency with a Bible Society copy of the Hebrew JNew Testa- 
ment, and plainly showed, by his remarks on what he read, 
that the contents were entirely new to him. 

Not very long ago, a picturesque-looking figure, stately and 
erect as a young oak, but grizzled with the frost of near 
seventy winters, knocked with his knuckles at my window, as 
I sat tapping at the outer wall of my brain, to try if any ideas 
were within, and civilly requested to know if I had any um- 
brellas to mend. There was something in the man's face which 
forbade the abrupt negative that was already upon my lips : 
age, honesty, suffering, and something besides that is inde- 
finable, compelled me to comply with his desire. He was clad 
in a garb which bore very solid pretensions to antiquity — 
smooth and shining with the unctuous friction of years, yet 
carefully stitched and mended throughout. I judged him to 
be an old soldier; and mindful of the tale of the (i ancient 
mariner," I found the means of setting him to work upon a 
job which occupied him for three-quarters of an hour, during 
which, in compliance with the inquiries I plied him with, he 
delivered himself at intervals to the following effect : — 

"This here's a French humrellar: I know'd he was a 
Frenchman afore I laid hold of him. I knows the make of 
that sort well enough. Ha — I reklect the time when we used 
to get five or six-and thirty shillin' for a good silk un. Free- 
trade in humrellar s and free -trade in bread ! Well, one tells 
up agin t'other, I s'pose. I had a pretty good taste of the 
French once in my time." 

E 



74 cmiosiTiEs or loxdox life. 

" Have you lived in France r " 

"Four year two months and twenty-seven days." 

" You have kept a pretty exact account. I hope you en- 
joyed your sojourn there ? " 

" Kot a bit of it; bein' I went there again' my will, and 
was a prisoner of war pretty well the whole time." 

' i Pray, how came that about ? " 

ic Why, you see 'tis more nor forty years agone now — full 
that since I first went and listed in the army. About the end 
of 1810 I were servant to an officer, and sailed with my mas- 
ter from Lisbon to join the garrison of English and Spaniards 
as lay beleaguered by the French in Cadiz. I was onfort- 
nitly took ill of a fever the very day as I stepped aboard, 
and confined to my berth all the voyage. Having the weather 
again' us, we were sixteen days at sea afore we came in sight 
of the Isle of Leon. But we never got there : a bad storm 
druv us ashore full ten miles or more to the west of Cadiz, 
and we was wrecked. "While all hands was trying what 
they knowed to save the crew and transports, the French kept 
firing on us all the time." 

" Are you sure of that? Such cruelty is not customary in 
civilized warfare." 

"I says nothin' but what's true. You see we had been 
driving in the storm under bare poles, and hadn't got a flag 
to strike ; so that we couldn't show no surrender : besides, 
'twasn't the reglar French army as took us, but a gang of 
irreglars as worked on their own account again' the British. 
The want of a flag to strike cost us a good many of our men 
killed by their shots. There was a good many sick besides 
myself, for the fever had spread a good deal on board ; and 
when the enemy seen our hands a-gettin' the sick men out 
in their hammocks, and lowering 'em into the boats, they 
left off firing ; and though they didn't offer no assistance, they 
allowed us to land as well as we could. We all got ashore 



THE UMBRELLA PEDLER. 75 

pretty nigh, but every one on us was made prisoners to a gang 
of fellows made up of the raff of all nations — French, Italian, 
and Irish volunteers for the most part — fighting for the sake 
of prize-money under the patronage of Marshal Yictor. They 
forced the Portuguese sailors, and a lot of our own fellows 
too, to hear a hand in plundering the vessel ; and when they 
had got all they could out of her, they set fire to her. I see 
her blow up as I lay shiverin' in my hammock under a ledge 
of a rock in the middle of the night. I was dreadful bad for 
a long time while we lay in prison that winter, wi' nothin' 
better than straw for a bed, and that most times wet. They 
turned the sick out of their hammocks, and bundled us all 
together upon one heap of rotten straw. But our lads stood 
by one another, and my master done what he could to have 
me took care of, though he could not come and see me. 

16 As the spring come on I got better, along o' many more ; 
though some of the poor fellows died just when they should 
have got well, for want of warmth and nourishment. The 
Frenchmen wanted us to work in the trenches, and we might 
have got out of prison if we would ha' done it. But that 
didn't suit us, and we were allowed to decline it, preferring 
to be marched off to prison to France. If I was to live for 
a thousand years — which, thank Heaven, I shan't — I 
shouldn't forget that there miserable march. "We was seven 
months on the route, sometimes a target for grilly fighters, 
who never showed their faces till they sent a volley of shot 
among us — sometimes short of victuals and water — some- 
times camped for the night on the top of a frosty rock with- 
out a bit o' coverin' beyond our own flutterin' rags. There 
was ne'er a bit of shoe or stocking among us by the time we 
had been a month on the route — no change o' linen — no 
victuals fit to keep the soul in a man's body — and no bed to 
He on arter the horrible fatigue of a march wi' bare feet over 
a mountaynous country. Many times we was all druv to- 

e 2 



76 CmiOSITIES OF LOXDOX life. 

getlier into a hole where half on us couldn't lie down at once. 
A good number of the prisoners got so badly knocked up on 
the road before we had crossed the mountains, that they was 
forced to be left behind, where some died, and some got well, 
and was exchanged, and joined the duke's army. If it hadn't 
been a little better travellin' in France than it was in Spain, 
I'm pretty sure I should have left my bones there. ~We 
marched all through France into French Flanders. TThen 
at last we got to Cambray, there wasn't much more than 
seventy of us out of well nigh two hundred that escaped out of 
the vessel. My master was left behind on parole, and was 
exchanged, and, worse luck for me and him too, poor man, 
was killed in battle before I got my liberty. 'Tis a bad thing 
to go to prison, but 'twas the happiest day of my life, 'cept 
the clay as I got out, when I first got into the prison at Cambray, 
and had a good bed of clean straw to lie upon, and a mouth- 
ful of decent victuals to comfort me. I stayed here near three 
years, and, considerin' all things, wasn't very badly off. My 
master, while he lived, didn't forget me, and through a French 
officer as he had made his friend, I got many indulgences and 
many a good ration from the governor. Perhaps I might 
have broke out o' prison, and found my way to the coast, as 
some of my comrades did — though whether they ever reached 
home I can't tell — but it wouldn't have been handsome in 
me to return the kindness of the governor by giving him the 
slip. There came a release for us all when Boney had lost 
the game." 

u Did you get pay for all the time you were in prison ? " 

" I did ; every penny of it, and spent it, like a fool, in 
double-quick time." 

" Was that the end of your soldiership ? " 

" Iso. I was transferred to the 21st, and before the end of 
the year had landed on the shores of the Mississippi, where 
I got into a worse mess than the tother." 



THE UMBEELLA PEDLEE. 77 

" You mean the affair of Xew Orleans ? " 

"I do — I was in it. There ain't much talk o' that in 
England. 'Twas a shameful bad business." 

u It was a fearfully fatal one to the British." 

"All owin' to stupid management, sir — nothin' else. We 
should ha' done the business proper enough if we'd a been 
well officered. Our generals thought, I s'pose, that we could 
all eat up half-a-dozen 'Merricans a-piece ; but they took 
care we shouldn't get at 'em, by leaving the scalin' ladders 
behind. So there we stood at daybreak, close up to their heavy 
guns, while every shot riddled us through. As it was, we 
might ha' stood some sort o' chance if we'd a been brought 
up in line ; but in close column as we was, thousands of our 
men was cut down in next to no time. I hadn't been standin' 
there three minutes afore I could ha' walked over the muddy 
canal in front of us, which was about four foot deep, on top 
o' the dead bodies o' the 44th. I could see an old nigger, 
not twenty paces in front, grinning at us wi' his white 
teeth through the fassins, and cramming heavy bags of musket- 
shot into the muzzle of a thirty-two pounder, and sending 
certain death to hundreds at every discharge. I would have 
gave my two arms to have got at the leering devil wi' my 
teeth. I see Paknum killed by a rifle-shot, and I was druv 
myself, wi' a lot more, smack agin the fassins by the rush 
o' the 93rd Highlanders, who scrambled over us into the 
enemy's works ; but not a man of 'em come back to tell what 
luck he found there. We stood there till more than half of 
us had nothiug to stand on, and then Lambert ordered the 
retreat to be sounded. It made me sick to stagger back through 
the piles of dead and dying men, whose brave lives had been 
fooled away from the want of a little common prudence. If 
we had been led on by a 'Merrican, we should ha' done just 
what we did do — that is, walked into the jaws of the very trap 
that had been so long getting ready for us. Our bad manage- 



78 crmiosiTiES of London lite. 

ment, and the want of a little respect for the enemy, cost us 
some thousands of lives, and spiled the success of Colonel 
Thornton, who carried the battery on the tother side o' the 
river, but was also obliged to retreat, because the whole force 
was blown to pieces, and there was nothing left to back him. 
If we had mastered that battery before we did anything else, 
and reduced the town first on that side of the water, we should 
have had a different tale to tell about New Orleans at this 
time o' day. After all, the 'llerricans had no pluck. They 
might ha' druv us into the river if they had the sperrit to come 
arter us. They had more than ten thousand men, and we 
was reduced to two thousand effectives ; but they let us re- 
treat in order, with guns and baggage, to our vessels fifteen 
miles off. That scan'lous affair was the first and last of my 
military service in 'Merriky. Soon arter that the peace was 
made, and I got my discharge, along of a bad roomatiz picked 
up through campm' in the swamps of the Mississippi." 

" Of course you have got a pension ?" 

"No, I han't — no pension, nor no medal, nor no nothin' !' : 

" How comes that about ? " 

" I can't tell 'xactly. If I harn't got it, 'taint for want of 
asking for it. But it seems I didn't take steps as I knowed 
nothin' about. If I'd done a sartin thins; at a sartin 
time, they tell me that every two years of my service would 
ha* counted for three, and then the government would ha' had 
a right to ha' made me a pensioner. They are very sorry, of 
course, and so am I ; but it can't be helped now." 

"It is well, then, that you have a resource in your trade. 
I suppose you learned that after your discharge?" 

"JSTo, I didn't, sir. I served my time regularly to the busi- 
ness in that very house that fell down the tother day in Graysher 
Street, and killed poor Hoolagan, and more besides. Here's your 
humrellar, sir ; I must charge you ninepence for it, and hope 
you won't think it too much. You see I have new- tipped all 



THE UMBRELLA PEDLEE. 79 

the bones, put on a new ferrule and new cap, repaired the 
spring, and fastened the handle, which was loose. — Thank'ee, 
sir — much obliged — proud to do anything for you, sir, at 
any time. I often comes round this way ; if you'd lay by any 
little jobs for me, sir, you won't say I does 'em badly, sir, or 
overcharges." 

Exit old soldier, carefully closing the garden-gate after him ; 
then, making a speaking-trumpet of his hand, slowly marching 
off to the tune of " Humrellars to mend ! AINY humrellars 
to me-e-e-end!" 



80 



THE BLIXD FIDDLEK. 



Oxe dismally foggy and rainy afternoon in Koveniber last, 
when the streets, clothed in a viscid garment of thick and 
slippery mud, were passable only at a snail's pace, because 
every step forward sent you half a step back again — when 
no one whom fate, or equally inexorable business, did not 
drive forth, ventured to brave the misty atmosphere fraught 
with catarrh and influenza — I heard the sound of a fiddle 
outside mv window. The strain was a melancholv attempt 
at a Scotch reel ; and the incongruity of the spectacle it con- 
jured up to my imagination compared with the actual scene 
before my eyes, had just awaked me to the perception of the 
comic, when the music ceased on a sudden in the middle of 
the second stave, and I heard the sound of a fall ; and a faint 
ejaculation, half- sigh, half-groan, which immediately followed, 
brought me to the door to see what was the matter. 

It was already getting dark, independently of the fog, and 
I could but dimly discern a dusky mass lying by the garden 
gate; bat I could hear the plaintive moans that proceeded 
from it ; and soon, with the help of Betty, whom I had sum- 
moned to my assistance, got the wretched bundle of humanity 
into a chair in front of the glowing kitchen fire. A few 
spoonsful of diluted brandy soon brought life and animation 
into a weather-beaten face, and produced from livid lips the 
eager, almost savage request, " Eor God's sake, give me a bit 
of vittles ! " 



THE BLIXD FIDDLER. 81 

" When did you eat last ? " 

" Not since yesterday morning. I had a bit of bread yes- 
terday morning." 

11 Oh ! " said Betty, " aint that horrid, and he a blind man 
— as blind as a stone ? " Giving the necessary directions, I 
left Betty to manage her blind patient in her own way, and 
in about an hour afterwards went down to see what improve- 
ment she had effected. 

The poor fellow, having satisfied the demands of nature, 
and supplied his own wants, had immediately begun to attend 
to those of his inseparable companion — his cracked, patched, 
and dilapidated fiddle. I found him airing it tenderly before 
the fire ; then, having borrowed a cloth from Betty, he em- 
ployed himself in cleansing the crazy instrument from the 
moist breath of the fog, and from the contaminations it had 
picked up through his fall. This accomplished, he began feel- 
ing it all over as cautiously as a surgeon does the body of a 
patient in search of a fracture. Fortunately there was no 
serious mischief done, and the poor fellow laughed cheerfully 
when he discovered that the only friend he had in the world 
had escaped unhurt, 

"Well, my man," said I, "how do you get on? Not 
hungry now, I hope ? " 

" Bless 'ee, sir, no ! I'm righter than a trivet now, sir. I 
ha'nt had sich a feed I can't tell 'ee when, sir. I 'in very 
much obleeged to you, sir, sure/y. I wor altogether done up, 
and that's a fact." 

" Well, then, perhaps you have no objection to return the 
favour we have done you by telling me how you came to be a 
blind fiddler, what you get by it, how you manage to live, and 
all about it ! " 

"Not a bit of objection in the world, sir, if you likes to 
hear it. There aint much fun in what I got to tell though, 
cos I ha'nt had much luck in my time : but if you wish to 

e 3 



82 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

hear it, of course you shall, and I'll begin at the beginning. 
I'm quite agreeable, sir." 

With that, laying his fiddle to rest in an old black bag 
which he drew from the crown of a crushed hat, and settling 
his arms on the elbows of the chair, so as to rest his whole 
frame in a state of unaccustomed luxury, he delivered himself 
literally, with the exception of certain circumlocutions which 
I have thought fit to digest into something like order and con- 
secutiveness, pretty much to the following effect : — 

"I aint but a youngish man, sir, though they do tell me 
that I looks a reg'lar old file. What might you suppose my 
age, sir? " 

"From forty-eight to fifty, or thereabouts." 

" There 'tis agin. Everybody says I'm fifty, when I'm not 
forty yet. I was born in 1811, sir, in Swan Alley, not far 
from the Artillery Ground. Hy father wor a shoemaker — 
perhaps I ought to say a cobbler, for he didn't make many 
shoes; good reason why, he was always a-mendin' on 'em. 
"When I was a very little un, I rek'lect partik'lar they was 
a-making the Eegent's Canal as runs under the City Road, 
and I used to get out afore I was big enough to wear trowsers, 
and make mud-pies out of the clay as was turned up. That 
was the best fun I ever knowed, that was ; but didn't I get 
the strap when my father catched me at it ? Ah, I knows 
what strap-sauce is well enough ! He wanted to teach me — 
cos I was the biggest boy — to make wax-ends, and I wanted 
to make mud-pies ; and many's the lie-kin' I got along o' that 
there canal a-diggin'. I never passes the bridge now without 
thinkin' on it. Then, you know, I could see — had as good 
use of my eyes as anybody. Ha ! well ! 'taint no use grievin'. 

" Mother died, and left four on us when I was about five 
years old, and then we got more strap and less vittles, I can 
tell'ee. Father got savage, an' took to drinkin', and we 
never dared to have a bit o' lark 'cept when he was out 



THE BLIXD FIDDLEE. 83 

o' doors. One night, when he was gone to the public-house, 
we was all a-playin' and larkin' in the room, and my brother, 
out o' tun, pushed me right over the kit into the fire. I fell 
with my face slap in the middle of the hot coals, and was so 
frightened that I couldn't make no attempt to get out, cos 
my legs was up in the air again' the kit. My two brothers 
and sister sung out a good un, and a ooman as lived up- stairs 
come down and picked me out. I was took off to the hos- 
pital, where I laid for se^en months, and a' most died wi' brain 
fever. Then I was sent home again, stone-blind, and father 
give me a hidin' for tumblin' into the fire, as if I hadn't had 
punishment enough. But I didn't care much for that. I 
had friends in the court, among the women and the gals, and 
I got a deal more vittles and kindness than I did afore. 

" When I was old enough, I was sent to the Blind Asylum, 
where I learned to make baskets and mats. I can make 
clothes-baskets and hampers, and that sort of work, well 
enough ; but the trade is so much cut up by the shops that it 
aint worth doin'. If I makes a basket for a washerooman 
for three shillins, it costs me half-a-crown for the wil- 
lows. It aint much better with the mats — the rope costs 
almost the money they fetch. I left the asylum when I was 
sixteen, and lived along with another blind man as made 
hampers for the wine -merchants. He had a pretty good trade, 
and I might ha' done well along of him if I could ha' carr'd 
home the goods ; but it aint no go for a blind man to get about 
the streets o' London wi' five or six hampers on his head. I 
tried it once or twice, and got shoved head-foremost into a 
butcher's shop by some chaps as wanted a lark ; so he couldn't 
send me out no more, and he couldn't go hisself. I had two 
years of that there hamper- work, and got the rheumatiz 
dreadful through workin' in a damp cellar all day long, and I 
was obliged to give it up — to go into the hospital again. 

" When I come out I didn't know where to go, and what I 
was to do. My father had moved away somewheres, and my 



84 CUEIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

two brothers had gone to sea. So I went to my parish, and 
had a go of the workhouse for matter of a year. There was 
a blind man in there as played the fiddle uncommon well, and 
the overseer made him show me a bit, and paid a goodish bit 
o' money for teachin' of me. I scraped away whenever they 
would let me, for I wanted to get out of the workhouse, and 
I picked up a tidy lot of tunes in four or five months. By the 
time I'd been at it a year, I thought I might manage to pick 
up a livin', and I turned out one rnorniu', when the summer 
was a-conrin' on, and begun fidcllin' in the streets. I didn't 
get much the first day — not quite sixpence I think 'twas — 
but I wouldn't go back upon the parish. I could lodge for a 
shillin' a week, and I could get a bit of broken vittles at times 
when folks wouldn't give me no money. I liked my liberty 
too well, after the confinement — first of the damp cellar, then 
of the hospital, and then in the workhouse — and I made up 
my mind to get my own livin' without bein' beholden to no- 
body. So I've a-fiddled pretty well ever since. 

" When I were two-and twenty, I took it into my head un- 
common as how I should like to learn to read ; so I went and 
applied at the Blind School in Red Lion Square, and used to 
go there and learn to read two or three nights of a week. 
There was a good many there, and some on 'em learned to 
read very well, and some couldn't learn nohow. I got on 
tolerablish. I went to the school more nor a year. We 
didn't pay nothin' for teachin' — only for the books : the 
books is very dear; the letters sticks up, and we feels 'em 
with our fingers. I gave four shillins for Izayer. I can read 
all on it, and John's Gospel too. That's all I got. I can't 
afford to buy no more. 

"At the Blind School I fell in with a young ooman as was 
learnin' to read. I kep company with her for Rye year, and 
then I married her. We've a been married nigh upon twelve 
year. She was born blind — never had no eyes in her head, 
not at all. She can do everything in a house as well a'most as 



THE BLIjXD fiddleb. 85 

them as can see : she can cook a meal's vittles beautiful, when 
we got it to be cooked. She sews with her needle, and mends 
my clothes, and does the washin' and ironin\ AYe are often 
very bad off, partik'lar at this time of the year. People don't 
care much about fiddlin' aud music in cold and wet weather : 
they walks away to keep theirselves warm; and forgits to 
give a fellar a copper. 

" I knows London all over, 'cept some of the new streets, 
and I knows them when I been through 'em once. I goes 
from Islington, where I lives, to the City, three times a week. 
When I come to a street where a customer of mine lives, I 
begins and numbers the houses with my stick, and then I 
strikes up when I comes to the house, and plays till I gets 
my penny or my bread and cheese. I always eats a piece of 
bread in the mornin' afore I goes out ; if I don't I gits the 
stomach-ache. Sometimes I don't git no more all the day ; 
but I gits bread and cheese at a house in Clerkenwell every 
Tuesday, and a good pint o' tea and a poun' a'most o' bread 
every Friday in Little SaiDt Thomas Apostle. You see I 
can't fiddle very well, cos my right arm is shrivelled up wi' 
the fire, and I can't draw the bow rightly level with the 
bridge athout I sits down; and in course I can't sit clown 
while I am walkin' about the streets ; so it aint many coppers 
I gits from chance customers. My reg'lar customers mostly 
gives me a penny a week : when they moves, I follers 'em 
wherever they goes : I can't afford to lose 'em; they brings 
me in, all on 'em, about three-and- sixpence a week, besides 
the vittles. 'Taint much vittles I eats at home, save on Sun- 
days, and a bit o' bread for breakfast afore I starts out of a 
mornin'. 

" There's lots o' blind men in London as gets a livin' with- 
out earnin' of it. I knows one as sits all day in the City 
Road a-readin' the Bible wi' his finger, and people thinks it's 
wonderful clever, and gives him a sight o' money. A poun' a 
week aint nothin' to him. But that there's a imposition; 



86 cttriosities of London life. 

there aint nothin' in it. I can read as well as he every hit ; 
hut people hadn't ought to get their hread by readin' the 
Bible and doin' of nothin' ; it aint respectable. I gives the 
people music : if they don't think it worth nothin', they gives 
me nothin' for it; if they do, they gives me a copper, and 
very glad to git it. There's some blind men as keeps standins 
in the street, and sells sticks, and braces, and padlocks, and 
key-rings ; some on 'em drives a good trade. I knows one 
as got a family brought up quite respectable — the boys is 
'prentices, and the gals goes to service. I should like to keep 
a standin' myself if I had a few poun's to begin with; but, 
Lord ! I never had but one sovereign in my hand in my life, 
and that wasn't mine. There's lots o' blind men goes about 
wi' dogs tied to a string : them's beggars, When a blind 
man drives a dog, he've a-made up his mind to be a gentle- 
man. A dog aint of no real use to a blind man in London — 
not a bit in the world. A dog is a blind beggar's sign; and 
when the dog carries a tray in his mouth to catch the coppers, 
then there's two beggars instead o' one. There's a sight o' 
blind men in London as can see as well as you can. They 
starts out when 'tis dark, wi' great patches over their eyes, 
and goes wi' a boy — a young thief — to lead 'em, among the 
crowds and in the markets of a Saturday night. "When they 
gets into the thick of it they sings out, ' Good Christians ! 
for the love of Heaven bestow your charity upon the poor 
blind — and God preserve your precious eyesight.' That's 
their chant. They gits a lot o' money from the people, par- 
tik'lar on Saturday nights, when the small change is fTyin' 
about; them's robbers, an' nothin' else. There's some poor 
fellows as I knows as can't do nothin' for a livin'. Blind 
men is often weak in the head — a bit silly-like. They mostly 
lives in work-houses ; sometimes they tries it on wi' lucifer- 
matches : they likes to get out in the sun in summer-time and 
fine weather : I pities them, poor fellows ! 'tis hard luck 
they've got. 



THE BLIND FIDDLEE. 8 7 

"I'm always cheerful-minded 'cept when I'm very hungry 
and got nothin' to take home to my wife. We don't want 
much — 'tis very little as keeps her; but I don't like to go 
home without nothin' in my pocket : then I sometimes thinks 
'tis too bad, and gets low-spirited ; but I soon goes to sleep 
and forgits it, cos I'm so tired when I goes home. My wife 
earns somethin' most weeks ; sometimes she looks arter little 
children when their mothers goes out a-charin. She haves 
three-halfpence a day for a child : when we got two babies 
for a week that makes eighteenpence, and pays the rent. A 
good thing that would be if we could do it always. She's 
very fond o' little babies, and knows how to do for 'em as well 
as a mother a'most, though she never had none of her own. 

" Saturday's my best day. My customers knows I can't 
play the fiddle of a Sunday, and so I gits a good allowance of 
vittles, and fills my bag. There's a butcher not far off as gives 
me a reg'lar good stew o' bones an' cuttin's every Saturday 
night. That's my Sunday's dinner, and a famous dinner my 
wife makes on it. There's a policeman out here as collars me 
reg'lar whenever my bag's a bit full, and turns it all out, and 
axes me where I stole it. I says : ' I'll answer that there 
question at the station-house, if you likes to take me there ;' 
but he never takes me up. That's a noosance, that is ! 

"I never buys no clothes; I git as much as I want gave 
me. The boots is the worst. In course I never gits them 
till they're worn out ; and. as I cant afford to have 'em mended, 
when it rains my feet is always in the wet ; but I'm pretty 
well used to it — that's one good thing. This time o' the year 
'tis very bad : there is so much bad weather, and so few 
people about, a blind fiddler might as well stay at home. 
There's been nothin' but rain all the week. I only earned 
twopence yesterday, and that just made up the rent as was 
over-due : there was nothin' for supper, though I'd had nothin' 
all day but a bit o' bread in the mornin', and to-day there was 
none for me to have, so I come away without any. My wife 



88 CTJEIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

have had her vittles to-day, that's one comfort : she went ont 
afore I did to go a-washin' ; she'll earn sixpence besides her 
vittles — and we shall have a good supper to-night, thank God ! 

" I've had a good many accidents in my time. There is so 
manv omnibuses now, that a blind man can't venture off the 
pavement. It takes me half an hour sometimes to get across 
from the "Angel" into the City Eoad. I've been knocked 
down by cabs and omnibuses six or seven times ; I never got 
much hurt myself, but my fiddle have been broke all to pieces 
several times. I always mend it myself, but it's a deal o' 
trouble and loss of time while the glue's a-dryin'. Drunken 
men is worse than omnibuses. I've been beat about by 
drunken men many's the time, cos I couldn't play the tunes 
they wanted. I never goes into a public-house now : I had 
so many tricks put upon me, that I finds it better to keep 
away. I was a' most killed once by a lot o' Irishmen : they 
knocked me about dreadful, and filled my fiddle full o' beer, 
and then made me play upon it, and cut the strings while I 
was a-playin'. They done that cos I'm a very little fellow, 
and got no strength. That's too bad ! Sometimes gentlefolks 
is none too civil. Just afore I come to your gate, I tried at a 
house a little way down the road : a gentleman come a rushin' 
out, catches me by the throat, and twistis me roun' and roun', 
and shoves me over the steps, a-swearin' as how he'd got two 
scrapers at his door a'ready, and didn't want another. That 
aint civil, seein' I fiddles as well as I can, and he got no call 
to pay for it if he ha'nt a mind to. 

"I dont know as I can tell you any thin' more, sir. You 
see I don't know much of the world. All days is pretty much 
alike to me : wet or dry, hot or cold, is all the difference 
between one day and another. "We does the best we can. 
Wheii the sun shines, and people walks about and enjoys their- 
selves, I gits a little money, and my wife and I is cheerful and 
contented. When the bad wintry weather comes down upon 
us, we do feel what it is to be hungry and poor ; but we can't 



THE BLLXD FIDDLER. 89 

help it, and it aint no use frettin'. AYe might git into the 
workhouse in the winter if we liked, hut then we must sell 
up all our sticks, and I should lose all my customers where I 
plays reg'lar, and have to begin the world agin when we come 
out in the summer. It wouldn't do, that wouldn't. 

" My wife's a merry little ooman, and can go without a 
dinner and never grumble : many's the day she gits no Tittles, 
no more than myself. "When there aint no Tittles in the cup- 
board, and no means of earnin' any, I tells her not to git up, 
and so she lies abed all day, cos 'tis easier fastin' in bed than 
when you are up and about. If I brings home anythin', then 
she gits up and cooks it, and then we're all right. "We 
always hopes for better times, and if we don't live to see 'em 
why then we shan't grieve for the want of 'em. I plays the 
song, There's a good time comin\ hoys, and my wife sings it. 
There's no harm in hopin' that we may all live to see it. 
That's all I've got to say, sir." 

"W ith that this uncomplaining heir of adverse fortune rose 
from his seat, placed his fiddle under his arm, and thanking 
me warmly for all favours, groped his way up the kitchen 
stairs and took his departure. I have given his history as he 
detailed it : it has had no colouring and requires no comment 
at my hands. It is just one of those revelations of the mys- 
teries of common life which are only remarkable because the 
world in general has not chosen to make them the object of 
remark. But verily it has a use and a signification which 
discontented respectability, cushioned in its easy-chair, may 
do well to ponder. 



90 



THE NEWSBOY'S DAY. 



Ckakley Pottee, is Polly Potter's biggest boy; and Polly 
Potter is a bard-working woman, with anotber boy and a 
baby to provide for, whose father died in the hospital the same 
week the baby was born. Mrs. Potter lives in one of the 
courts running out of St. Martin's Lane, in a central nest of 
struggling poverty and hardship, situated not very far from 
the National Gallery. Ever since Tom Potter's death, owing 
to a fall from a scaffolding, to say nothing of the weary weeks 
he lay ill, it has been work or starve — do or die — with the 
Potter family. The club-money luckily came in at the death 
and birth, and helped the widow over the double trouble ; and 
as soon as she got upon her feet, she set about helping herself. 
She took Charley, who was going in thirteen, and as sharp a 
young fellow as need be, away from school, and told him he 
must now go to work instead of his father — a proposition 
which the boy accepted in the very spirit of a young middy 
unexpectedly promoted to a lieutenancy ; and thus it was that 
the child became, in a manner, a man at once. By the recom- 
mendation of Polly's old master, a tradesman in the Strand, 
Charley was helped to employment from a newspaper agent, 
whom he serves manfully. While Polly is at home washing 
or ironing, or abroad charin' or nussin', little Billy meantime 
taking care of the baby, we shall amuse ourselves by following 
Charley through the routine of one day's operations. It may 



THE NEWSBOY'S DAY. 91 

not be altogether time thrown away : there is many an old 
boy as well as a host of young ones who may learn a lesson 
from. it. 

It is a dark, dreary, and foggy morning in January ; the 
wind is driving from the south-east, bringing along with it a 
delicious mixture of snow and rain; and it yet wants two 
hours of daylight, when Charley, slinking from the side of his 
sleeping brother, turns out of bed, and dons his clothes. He 
has no notion of washing his face just yet — that is a luxury 
which must be deferred till breakfast-time, which is a good 
way off at present. The pelting sleet, the driving wind, and 
the fog are such small trifles in his category of inconveniences, 
that he takes no more notice of them than just to button his 
jacket to the chin, and lug his cloth cap down over his eyes, 
as he gently shuts the door after him, and steps out into the 
darkness. Then he digs his hands into his pockets, and bend- 
ing his head towards the storm, in the attitude of a skater in a 
Dutch frost-piece, steers round the steps of St. Martin's 
Church, and then straight on through the Strand and Temple 
Ear, and along Fleet Street, near the end of which he disappears 
suddenly in the dark and narrow maw of Black- Horse Alley. 
This Black-Horse Alley is a place of no repute at all : among 
all the courts and closes which debouch into Fleet Street on 
either side of the way, it is almost the only one which is not 
celebrated for something or somebody or other in records 
either literary or dramatic, ghostly or convivial. By daylight 
it is particularly dirty, dark, and unsavoury, having no outlet 
but a narrow one at the centre, on the right, which lands the 
explorer inlarringdon Street, opposite to the ruined gateway 
of what a few years ago was the Meet Prison. A black horse, 
or a horse of any colour, once fairly in the alley, would find it 
a difficult matter to turn round, and would have to back out, 
or else, like an eel in a water-pipe, wait till destiny chose to 
release him. "Wretched old tenements are the tall buildings on 
either side, which shut out the daylight from the court, and 



92 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDO^ LIFE. 

one, the biggest of them all, belongs to an association of news- 
men ; being open all day, and very likely all night too, for 
we never saw it shut, it serves as a central depot whence 
whole tons of newspapers, received damp from the printing- 
machine, take their departure daily for all parts of the king- 
dom. 

Here we must follow close upon the heels of Charley. 
Diving into the court, and proceeding a score of yards or so, 
we find the old house bathed in a flood of gaslight from top to 
bottom. Men and boys are rushing up and down the angular 
stairs, some with damp loads upon their backs, and others 
hastening off to procure them. The morning papers have all 
been " put to bed," as it is termed, and their respective ma- 
chines are now rolling off copies, each at the rate of several 
thousands an hour. As fast as they come into being, they are 
counted off in quires, and borne away by the agents, who 
undertake to supply the country districts. An enormous num- 
ber of them come on the shoulders of the newsboys to Black - 
Horse Alley. On the top-floor of the house — and we notice, 
as we ascend, that all the floors are furnished and occupied 
alike — we find Charley already at his work. He stands with 
a score of other lads and men, behind a continuous fiat deal- 
board, which runs round the whole circuit of the floor, elevated 
on tressels, and standing about two feet from the wall. Those 
next him are folding, packing, and bundling up papers in 
time for the morning mail, which will carry them to Bristol 
and to Birmingham, more than a hundred miles distant, and 
to a hundred places besides, in time to lay them upon the 
breakfast-tables of the comfortable class. Charley, with paste- 
brush and printed addresses, is as busy as the best. Fost, 
Herald, Chronicle, Advertiser, and Daily News are flying about 
like so many mad flags amidst the clamour of voices, the 
stamping of feet, and the blows of hard palms upon wet paper. 
By and by the Times, which, on account of its omnivorous 
machine, can afford to sit up longer, and go to bed later than 



the newsboy's day. 93 

its contemporaries, pours in a fresh flood of work. All hands 
go at it together ; but as fast as one huge pile is cleared off, 
another comes, and neither the noise nor the activity relents 
until the moment for posting draws nigh, when the well-filled 
bags are hoisted on young shoulders, or piled on light traps 
waiting close by in the street — and off they roll or run to the 
post-office. Charley himself staggers out of Black-Horse 
Alley, looking, with a huge bag upon his shoulders, like a very 
great bird with a very small pair of legs, and in six and a half 
minutes — the exact time allowed — shoots his body into the 
aperture at St. Martin' s-le- Grand, and, catching up the emptied 
bag, which flies out upon him the next moment, walks leisurely 
away. 

Charley knows now that the immediate hurry is over, and, in 
spite of the rain which still continues to drizzle down, he has 
a game at bolstering a comrade with his empty bag, in which 
friendly interchange of civilities the two together make their 
way, not back to Black-Horse Alley, but to their master's 
shop, at which they arrive before it is open, and before the 
neighbours are up. Here they meet half-a-dozen more boys, 
distributors hired by the week to do a few hours' work in the 
morning, in the delivery of newspapers to subscribers. The 
post-office, which will carry a stamped newspaper 100 or 500 
miles for nothing, will not carry it a short distance without 
payment of a penny, and therefore the newsman has to deliver 
by private hand all papers within the limits. For this respon- 
sible commission, there are always plenty of candidates among 
the London boys ; and here are half a dozen of them this morn- 
ing waiting the arrival of the master with his budget. Pending 
his advent, as the rain peppers down unceasingly, they wrap 
their bags round their shoulders, and, arranging themselves 
in a rank under the projecting eaves of the shop- window, 
commence the performance of an impromptu overture with 
their heels against the wooden framework that supports the 
shutters which they are polishing with their backs. The 



94 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

neighbours know this sort of demonstration well enough ; it is 
as good as Bow Bells to all within hearing, and has the effect 
of rousing many a sleeper from his bed. Day has dawned 
during the performance, and, soon after, the master's little 
pony-cart is seen in the distance rattling over the stones. He 
jumps out of the trap almost before it has stopped, throwing 
Charley the key of the shop -door. The boy has the door open 
and the shutters down in an instant ; the piles of newspapers 
are transferred from their swaddling blankets to the counter, 
and as rapidly as is consistent with a cautious accuracy, they 
are allotted, among the different distributors, each of whom, 
as he receives his complement, starts off upon his mission. 
Charley has a round to go over, the course of which has been 
suited to his convenience, as its termination will bring him 
within a short distance of his own home, where he arrives by 
nine o'clock. 

Before breakfast, he makes his toilet, and rubs off the resi- 
duum of London particular which has accumulated upon his 
skin within the last twenty -four hours. This necessary pre- 
liminary settled, he addresses himself to sundry logs of bread 
and butter, and a basin of scalding coffee, which has been kept 
simmering on the hob for him. Solid and fluid are dispatched 
with a relish that is to be earned only by early rising and out- 
door work. He talks as he eats, and tells his mother the news 
which he has contrived to pick up in the course of the morn- 
ing — particularly about that murder over the water, and the 
behaviour of "the cove what's took in custody about it." 
Perhaps he has an extra paper ; and if so, he reads a bit of the 
police -reports, especially if anybody in the neighbourhood is 
implicated in one of the cases. Breakfast over, he get's back 
to his master's shop, where he finds a bundle of newspapers 
ready for him, which he is directed to get rid of at the railway 
station, if possible. For a certain reason, well known to 
master and servant, he has a decided fancy for this part of his 
business ; and he loses no time in transporting himself to an 



THE NEWSBOY^ DAY. 95 

arena always favourable to this branch of commerce. The 
bustle of trains arriving and departing excites his spirits and 
energies, and, determined on doing business, he gives full scope 
to his lungs. "Times, Times — to-day's Times! Morning 
Chronicle ! Post ! Advertiser! Illustrated, News ! "Who's for 
to-day's paper ? Paper, gentlemen ! News, news ! Paper, 
paper, paper ! Chronicle ! — Who's for Punch 9" In this way, 
he rings the changes backwards and forwards, not even pausing 
while engaged with a customer, and only holding his peace 
while the station is vacant. Then he takes breath, and per- 
haps, too, takes a dose of theatrical criticism from the columns 
of the Chronicle, or of the last new jokes in Punch. The 
arrival of a new batch of passengers wakes him up again, and 
he is among them in a moment, with the same incessant song 
and the same activity. His eyes are everywhere, and he never 
loses a chance; he cherishes the first-class carriages especially, 
and a passenger cannot pop his head out of window for a 
moment, without being confronted with the damp sheet of the 
Times, and assailed with the ringing sound of his voice. 
Charley generally continues this traffic till dinner-time, which 
with him is at one o'clock. Whether he continues it after that 
time, is a matter frequently left to his own discretion ; and as 
he has an interest in exercising that upon sound principles, we 
may be sure he does the best he can. 

The newsboy's dinner might be described in mathematical 
terms as an " unknown quantity." It may consist of a warm 
and savoury mess, discussed at leisure beneath the eye of his 
mother, or it may be a crust of bread and cheese, eaten in the 
streets while hurrying shopwards from the station of a railway, 
or the deck of a steam-boat. Sometimes he has to eat dinner 
and supper " all under one," cheating his appetite in the 
interim with a hunch of bread and a cup of coffee ; at other 
times, he will patronise the pie-shops, and dine upon eel or 
mutton pies. Eut, dinner or no dinner, he must be at the beck 
and bidding of his master early in the afternoon, to give in an 



96 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

account of his sales and stock, and to assist in the important 
proceedings which have to be gone through before the departure 
of the evening mails. Of course, it is the object of every 
newsman to get rid, if possible, of all the papers he buys ; for 
if they are kept to the next day, they are worth only half- 
price ; and if a day beyond that, they are but waste-paper. 
The newsman, therefore, has in one sense to take stock every 
day — in fact, oftener; and the evening post-hour, which is 
six o'clock, is to be looked upon as the hour for striking a 
balance of profit : because, whatever is left on hand after that 
hour has struck, is wholly or partially a loss. Newspapers 
which have been lent by the hour, have to be collected in 
time for the evening mail, or they may some of them be left 
for further hire, and go as half-pricers next morning. Charley 
is running about on this business for an hour or two in the 
afternoon; and it happens to-day that by five o'clock, or a 
little before, his master has discovered that he has more of 
one or two of the daily papers than he wants, and that he is 
short of others, which he must procure to supply his country 
customers. It would be very easy to purchase those he wants, 
but in that case it might be impossible to sell those he does 
not want, and the loss of the sum they cost would con- 
stitute an unwelcome drawback to the profits of the 
day's business. But it happens that there are a score 
of other newsmen in the same awkward predicament — a pre- 
dicament which is sure to recur to most of them every day in 
the week, and which has, therefore, begotten its own remedy, 
as all difficulties of the sort invariably do in London. The 
remedy is the Newspaper Exchange, which has its locality in 
no recognized or established spot, though it is oftener held in 
Catherine Street, Strand, or at St. Martin' s-le- Grand, in front of 
the Post-office, than elsewhere. This Exchange, it is said, 
originated with the newsboys ; and though it has been in 
existence, to our knowledge, for a dozen years at least, boys 
are the only members to this hour. It consists of a meeting 



THE NEWSBOY'S DAY. 97 

in the open street, very rapidly assembled — the parties appear- 
ing on the ground soon after four in the afternoon, continuing 
to increase in numbers until after five — and still more rapidly 
dispersed, under pressure of the Post-office, when the business 
of the hour has been transacted. 

j On the present occasion, Charley is entrusted with a dozen 
newspapers which are of no use to his employer, and his 
mission is to replace them by as many others, which are 
wanted to go into the country by the six o'clock post. He 
tucks them under his arm, and, it being already upon the 
stroke of five, is off towards 'Change as fast as he can 
run, He can hear the sharp eager cries of the juvenile 
stock-brokers as he rounds the corner: "Ad. for Chron." 
" Post for Times," " Post for Ad.," " Herald for Ad.," " Ad. 
for News," &c, including well nigh all the changes that can 
be rung upon all the London newspapers. He mingles with 
the throng, and listens a moment or two. At the sound 
of "Ad. for Chron." he explodes suddenly with a " Here 
you are !" and the exchange is effected in that indefinable 
fraction of time known among newsboys as "two twos." 
" Times for Chron." is an offer that suits him again, and 
again the momentary transfer is effected. Then he lifts 
up his voice, "Post for Times, Chron. for Times," and, be- 
stirring himself, effects half-a-dozen more exchanges in less 
time than we should care to mention — now and then refer- 
ring to the list of his wants, and overhauling his stock, in 
order to be sure, amidst the excitement of the market, that 
he is doing a correct trade. He finds, after half-an-hour's 
bawling and bargaining, that he wants yet a Times and an 
Advertiser, and he knows there is a boy present who has them 
to dispose of, but Charley has not in his stock what the other 
wants in exchange. So he sets about " working the oracle," 
as he terms it : instead of bawling " Chron. for Times," which 
is the exchange he really desiderates, he bawls " Chron. for 
Post" because the boy with the Times wants a Post for it, 

E 



98 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

which. Charley hasn't got to give ; hut by dint of bawling he 
at length gets a Post for his Chronicle, and then he is in a 
condition to make the desired exchange. Sometimes he will 
go so far as to "work the oracle " three or four deep — that is, 
he will effect three or four separate exchanges before he has 
transmuted the newspaper he wanted to get rid of into the one 
he desired to possess — or changed bad stock into good: by 
such intricate exploits, he has obtained among his fellows the 
reputation of a "knowing young shaver;" and it is to be 
hoped that he gets, in reward of his ingenuity, something more 
substantial from his employer, for which the little family at 
home is none the worse. 

Before the affairs on 'Change have come to their sudden 
conclusion, Charley is back to the shop ; and now all hands 
are busy in making up the big bag, which must start on its 
passage to the Post-office, at the very latest, by ten minutes 
before six, the distance being fully a nine minutes' walk. 
There is the same ceremony with the evening papers as there 
was with the morning ones, and there is the same limit as to 
time for its performance. But what must be done must, and 
of course is done ; and in a well-ordered concern, like that 
of which young Potter is a member, it is done in good time 
too. Before the race against the clock commences, Charley 
has got the bag hoisted on his shoulders, and, with a fair 
couple of minutes to spare, is trudging steadily towards St. 
^Martin' s-le- Grand. TTe shall leave him to find his way there, 
which he can do well enough without us, and walk on before, 
to see what takes place at the post-office at this particular 
hour of the da v. 

On ascending the steps of the huge building, which, huge 
as it is, is found to be all too small for the rapidly-increasing 
correspondence of the country, we find that we are by no 
means singular in harbouring a curiosity to witness the pheno- 
mena which attend upon the last closing minutes of the hour 
whose expiry shuts up the post for the night. The broad area 



THE NEWSBOY'S DAY. 99 

between the lofty pillars that support the roof is peopled 
with some hundred or two of spectators, come, like ourselves, 
to observe the multitudinous rush of newspapers and letters 
which, up to the very last moment, are borne by the living 
tide into the many-mouthed machine which distributes them 
through the length and breadth of the land — nay, of the entire 
globe. Policemen are in attendance to keep a clear passage, 
so that the very last comer shall meet no obstruction in his 
path. The spectators marshal themselves on the right of 
the entrance, leaving the left free to all who have letters 
or papers to deposit. These comprise every class of the 
community, commercial and non- commercial — clerks from 
counting-houses, lawyers from the Temple, messengers from 
warehouses, young men and maidens, old men and merchants, 
rich men and poor men, idlers and busybodies. As closing- 
time approaches, and the illuminated dial above points to five 
minutes to six, the crowd increases, and the patter of approach- 
ing footsteps in quick time thickens on the ear. Sacks, of all 
shapes and sizes, bulgy and slim, are seen walking up the 
stairs — some as long as bags of hops, beneath which the 
bearers stagger unsteadily towards the breach ; others, of more 
moderate capacity, containing but a couple of bushels or so of 
damp sheets ; and others, again, of hardly peck measure. All 
discharge their contents into the trap nearest the entrance, in 
which operation they are assisted by a man in a red coat, who, 
Irom long practice, has acquired the knack of emptying a bag 
of any size and returning it to the owner with one movement 
of his arm. By and by, as the lapsing minutes glide away, 
he is besieged in his position by the rush of bags, and looks 
very likely to be buried alive, until somebody comes to his 
assistance. The bags, as fast as they arrive, disappear through 
the wide orifice, and anon come flying out again empty — you 
don't exactly see from whence. Here comes a monster- sack, 
borne by two men, which is with difficulty lugged into quarters, 

e 2 



100 curiosities or londox lite. 

while others crowd after it, like a brood of chickens diving 
into the hole through a bam-door after the mother-hen. 

JNTow is the critical moment — the clock strikes, clang! — in 
go a brace of bulky bags ; clang ! the second — in go three more 
rolling one over another, and up rushes a lawyer's clerk, without 
his hat, which has flown off at the entrance, and darts forward 
to the letter-box at the further corner, fencing his way with a 
long packet of red-taped foolscap, with which he makes a 
successful lunge at the slit, and disappears ; clang ! the third — 
another brace of sacks have jumped down the throat of the 
post-office, and more yet are seen and heard scrambling and 
puffing up the steps ; clang ! the fourth — and in goes another 
bouncing bag, followed by a little one in its rear ; clang ! the 
fifth — nothing more, a breathless pause, and a general look of 
inquiry, as much as to say : "Is it all over ?" ~No ! here 
comes another big bag dashing head-foremost up the steps ; in 
it rushes like mad, when, clang! the sixth — and down falls 
the trap-door, cutting it almost in two halves as it is shooting 
in, and there it lies, half in and half out, like an enormous 
Erobdignag rat caught in a murderous Erobdignag trap, only 
wanting .a tail to complete the similitude. The bearer, who is 
in a bath of perspiration, wipes the dew from his face as he 
glances round with a look of triumph. He knows that if 
there is a doubt whether he was in legal time or not, he will, 
by established custom, be allowed the benefit of the doubt, 
and that because the post-office could not shut his bag out, 
they are bound to take it in. He is perfectly right : in less 
than a minute (minutes in this case are important), the bag is 
drawn in, and returned to him empty, and he joins the crowd, 
who, the exhibition being over, disperse about their business. 
It is a very rare occurrence for a bag of newspapers to arrive 
too late for the evening post. We have known it to take place 
occasionally ; but when it does happen, we suspect that if the 
failure were traced to its source, it would be found to arise 



THE NEWSBOY'S DAY. 101 

from the enterprising spirit of some defiant newsboy, who had 
resolved to win a race against time, and had failed in doing 
it. Boys have been known before now (we have seen it done) 
to carry their bags within very good time to what they con- 
sider a practicable distance, and then to halt, waiting for the 
first stroke of the bell, the signal for a headlong scamper over 
the remaining ground, which has to be traversed while the 
clock is striking. It may well happen occasionally that this 
daring experiment is not successful, in which case the over- 
confident urchin has to return with his bag unloaded, to the 
consternation of his employer and his own disgrace. 

Charlev knows better than that. We have seen him dis- 
charge his load among the first arrivals ; and now, in consi- 
deration of the early hour at which his services were required 
in the morning, his work is done for the day, and he strolls 
leisurely homeward. He is rather tired, but not knocked up, 
nor anything like it. There is a substantial supper waiting him, 
which having well earned he has a right to enjoy, as he does 
enjoy it, without a single feeling of dissatisfaction. After his 
repast, if the weather is dry, he will have a chase with young 
Eill round the fountains in Trafalgar Square ; or if it is wet 
and cold, there will be a game with the baby before the fire ; or 
if the baby should be asleep, Bill will get a lesson in pot-hooks 
and hangers, with slate and pencil for materials, and Charley 
for writing-master ; or he will have to spell out a column of 
last week's news, subject to the corrections of his teacher. 
These pleasures and pursuits, however, cannot be protracted 
to a very late hour. Early rising necessitates early rest ; and 
the boys are, therefore, despatched to bed when the bell of 
the neighbouring church rings out nine, that the newsboy 
may recruit, with needful repose, the strength required for 
the exertions of the morrow. 

Saturday night is the bright spot in Charley's week. Then 
he gets his wages, which go to his mother ; and then he can 
sit up as late as he likes, because he can get up as late as he 



102 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LITE. 

likes on the morrow ; and because he can do both, he will go 

to the play if he can manage to raise the necessary sixpence. 

He looks upon the drama, which he calls the " drawmer," as 

the grandest of all our institutions, and he has yery original 

ideas on the subject of plays and acting. He knows, as he 

says, lots of tragic speeches, and spouts them to Billy as they 

lie awake in bed, sometimes dropping off to sleep in the middle 

of a soliloquy. He has doubts whether the pantomime is 

quite legitimate, but wonders, with Billy, why it isn't played 

all the year round — is sure it would draw. He knows of 

course that Hamlet is " first-rate/ ' and Hacleth the same ; 

but his sympathies go with that little pig- tailed tar in the 

shiny hat at the Victoria, who, hitching up his canvas trousers 

with one hand, and shaking a short, dumpy cutlass in the 

other, hacks and hews his way through a whole regiment of 

red-coats, who surprise him in the smuggler's cave, and gets 

clear off, leaving half of his adversaries dead on the stage. 

The valiant smuggler is Charley's hero, and he admires him 

amazingly, never giving a thought to the why or wherefore, or 

suspecting for a moment that it is far more honourable to work 

hard, as he does, in helping to provide an honest crust for 

those who are dear to him, than to be the boldest smuggler 

that ever had a valid claim to the gallows. 



103 



THE WATERMAN. 



Undek this designation the reader will naturally look for an 
active young fellow, who plies a pair of oars upon the broad 
surface of the Thames. No such thing. If the " jolly young 
waterman' ' of a generation ago yet survive and feather his 
oars upon the bosom of the river — which we are inclined to 
doubt — it must be beyond the limits of the bridges and the 
range of the half-penny, penny, and two-penny steamers, 
which would peril the safety of his wherry and the lives of 
his fare. No ; the jolly young waterman of the days when 
George the Third was king, has been effectually banished from 
the London river ; and in his name an old waterman, not par- 
ticularly jolly, has made his appearance in the London streets. 
He is the presiding genius of that unpleasant conglomeration of 
mud and mire, of decomposing straw and musty hay, of oats and 
chaff, of ruined and ruinous vehicles, of asthmatic and broken- 
kneed horse-flesh, of oscillating pendulous nose-bags, and 
of brown-coated unshaven cabmen, redolent of beer and tobacco 
and rotten- stone and candle-grease, which all together go to 
make up a cab-stand. Of all these ill-compounded and hete- 
rogeneous elements, the waterman is the solitary permanent 
item. The wind may scatter the hay, straw, and chaff; the 
sun may dry up the mire and mud, and a sudden shower may 
dissipate the drivers to the four points of the compass ; but he, 
like a courageous general, remains firm and unmoved at his 



104. CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

post, and sticks to his half-dozen tubs of water, probably for 
the simple reason that he has nowhere else to go. It is from 
these tubs, each of about a gallon capacity, and from which 
the miserable hacks that drag the lumbering cabs over the 
London stones slake their burning thirst, that he derives his 
designation of " waterman." He is the depository of some 
moist species of authority over the tubs aforesaid, and he car- 
ries a key in one of his seventy-five pockets, which admits him 
to a pipe in a recess in the wall, where he levies unlimited 
contributions upon the New Biver Company. 

In personal appearance, the waterman is quite an unique 
specimen, and not to be mistaken for a member of any other 
fraternity. To describe his costume would be of no avail. He 
wears no particular costume, but an assemblage of all the cos- 
tumes of which he can get possession. He is so covered on 
and covered in with garments of every sort, that his individu- 
alitv is not to be got at. He is an animated collection of coats 
and waistcoats and neck-ties of everv conceivable colour and 
cut, and all, like himself, in a state of considerable dilapida- 
tion. It is doubted by some whether he really lives anywhere 
else than on the stand, because he is never observed to go 
home. He is noted for irregular hours, and for sleeping at any 
time in the day, or the night either, along with the nose-bags, 
in the insides of cabs, with his feet sometimes resting upon the 
pavement. In summer time he snores at his ease, through 
the sunny afternoons, when the cabs are standing still, upon 
the bench in front of the public-house, and starts into activity 
again by the time the evening parties demand the services of 
his friends the drivers, and his own. 

The waterman gets his living in a very fractional way. He 
has no settled stipend, but receives a copper from every cab- 
man who drives off the stand with a fare. In return for this, 
it his business to open the door ^f the vehicle, and close it 
after the customer has taken his seat, and while doing this he 
tries all he can to levy an additional contribution from the fare, 



THE WATEKMAST. 105 

in which attempt he is for the most part successful. Some- 
times it happens, when his stand is in the suburbs, that he 
rears a brood of chickens, which grow up under the horses* 
feet, and are sold for the spit, if they escape, for a sufficient 
length of time, from being kicked to death by the horses, run 
over by the wheels, or hunted and eaten by the dogs and cats 
of the neighbourhood. In addition to these avocations, he 
cleans knives, polishes boots, and scours pots for the publican, 
and makes himself, as it is termed, generally useful, either in 
the stable or the cellar. 

Among his companions the cabmen, the waterman partakes 
of the character both of a butt and an oracle. He is always 
older than they — being invariably a man rather stricken in 
years. He is a good judge of horse-flesh, especially of that 
peculiar species which flourishes on a cab-stand, and knows 
what the " wettany sarjun" would do in such and such a case. 
His conversation with his companions is a kind of audible 
short-hand, not very intelligible to the uninitiated ; and you 
may listen to it a long while, if you choose, without being 
much the wiser. He finds it to his interest to put up with 
their jokes, as well practical as verbal, without complaining, 
as he is mainly dependent upon them for his income. They 
treat him, however, upon the whole, with consideration, as 
he is virtually a watchman as well as a waterman, and 
frequently has the charge of the whole stand, while the 
drivers, who should be upon their boxes in readiness for cus- 
tomers, are amusing themselves round the tap-room fire, or in 
the skittle-ground of the adjoining public-house. In their 
merriment he is a very modest and submissive participator. 
When the festive cup goes round, it comes to him last, and 
he pledges the health of the cabmen in the dregs of the tan- 
kard. He pays no scot, and has no score chalked up on the 
landlord's slate ; not that his credit is bad, so much as that 
his ready money is so scarce that he dares not venture on credit. 
He is always in good odour with the landlord of the tavern 

e 3 



106 CTJEIOSITIES OF LONDOX LIFE. 

nearest the cab-stand, because he is so obliging and ready with 
his good offices. By dint of his officious services he contrives 
to constitute himself in a manner the waste -butt of the estab- 
lishment. Stale-beer and stale-bread and fleshless joints of 
meat become his as if by right of inheritance, and he feasts on the 
fat of the land — after others have done with it. He is generally 
a peaceable and quiet subject, with a civil word for everybody, 
and a supplicatory one for himself — which, by the way, he 
never forgets to prefer when an opportiuiity offers. If he meet 
with a repulse, it is no more than he is used to ; he can retire 
within himself, and, in the folds of his multitudinous garments, 
collect his courage with the anticipation of better success next 
time. 

It is thus that the waterman gets his living. Unfortunately, 
it is pretty much in the same way that the poor old fellow fre- 
quently gets his death. He has a foolish faith in the multi- 
plicity of his wrappers, and in the altitude of his wooden clogs. 
He throws an extra sack or two over his shoulders in the foggy 
slushy days and nights of winter, and buries his hard fists in a 
cashiered pair of boxing gloves ; and if the frost is severe, he 
will wind a hayband round his legs, and potter about among 
his icy tubs, buoyed up with a vision of yet another and another 
copper, in the face of a storm which sends younger and stronger 
men than he cowering to their firesides. Then, stern and angry 
winter comes at last, and seizes him by the throat and prostrates 
him in a moment on the cold pavement ; and then a brace of 
his old friends hoist him into the nearest cab, and give him a 
gratuitous ride to the nearest hospital ; and then our old friend 
the waterman is suddenly transformed into a decided and hope- 
less case of some dreadful disease with an ugly dog-latin name, 
come in the very nick of time for the instruction of a medical 
class; and then — and then — and then farewell, old waterman. 



107 



AN EXTINGUISHER. 



Yonder perambulating pyramid of deal boards, labelled on its 
four acute-angled fronts with. llessrs. "Welt and Felt's puffs 
of Wellington boots, at 9s. 4d. a pair, is technically termed, 
among the initiated, an Extinguisher, doubtless from its simi- 
larity in shape to that useful domestic implement. The term 
is applicable in more senses than one : the machine in question 
is not merely like an extinguisher in shape, but also in its 
operation; he who puts it on, in some sort extinguishes him- 
self — quenches the last fluttering glimmer of ambition, and 
resigns his being to a lot of very equivocal happiness, and 
one much more adapted to provoke the wit than to excite the 
pity of unthinking spectators. One man may regard him as 
a peripatetic philosopher, an ingenious combination of Dio- 
genes and a snail, carrying his humble mansion wherever he 
goes, and observing mankind from the summit of his desires ; 
another may choose to look upon him as one who has volun- 
tarily thrust himself into a pillory for the guerdon of fourteen - 
pence a day ; a third, affecting to look up to his cloudy top 
from a level of fifty feet below him, may hail him as a Simeon 
Stylites ; while a fourth shall name him Cheops, because his 
bones are buried within the walls of a pyramid. 

In sober truth, the tenant of an extinguisher is neither 
philosopher, Romish saint, nor anchorite. He is rather a man 
doubly and trebly unfortunate, who often, from the want of 



108 CTCTLIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

* 

industry, the want of a profession, or the want of persever- 
ance, capacity, or integrity, and most of all from the want of 
self-denial, finds his way into his wooden surtout. Other men 
achieve distinction through the exercise of positive virtues ; 
he arrives at his through the sheer force of his numberless 
negations ; the qualities which he does not possess accomplish 
his destiny, and degrade him to the lowest rank, as surely and 
inevitably as the qualities of enterprise and integrity exalt 
their possessors to the highest. Let us glance briefly over the 
history of one whom we knew in better days, and whom we 
lately encountered while sheltering his conical sedan, during 
a storm of rain, beneath the Piazza of Covent Garden Market. 
Jack Battle was the only son of a tradesman well-to-do in 
the world, and who drove a thriving business in a large town 
in the Vest of England. Unhappily for Jack, his father died 
after a short illness-, just as the boy had left school, and was 
hesitating in the choice of a profession, having just completed 
his fifteenth year. By his father's will the whole of the pro- 
perty was equally divided between his two children, Jack and 
his sister. The executors found it necessary to sell the busi- 
ness, as the lad was too young to take it in charge. The will 
was proved at Doctors' Commons, and the property amounted 
to near £8,000. So soon as Jack was made aware that when 
he was of age he should come into the possession of four 
thousand pounds, his disinclination for business of any kind 
soon became apparent. He grew apace, but his pride dilated 
faster than his person. His father's executors, by virtue of 
the trust they held, articled him to a solicitor, but they could 
not make him learn his profession, of every detail of which 
he contrived to remain consummately ignorant. He aped the 
man while yet a boy, and, cultivating dancing and whiskers 
in preference to Blackstone and Coke, grew up a very graceful 
and handsome ignoramus, the plague of his guardians, whom 
he was continually pestering for supplies, and the delight of 
quadrille parties where he shone a star of the first magnitude. 



AN EXTINGUISHES. 109 

"When the last lingering year of his minority had at length 
taken wing, his guardians were but too glad to surrender their 
trust ; and Jack, now his own master, and master of more 
than four thousand pounds besides, started off for Paris, to 
enjoy his liberty unrestrained. 

He was absent barely three years, during which time his 
sister had married a substantial farmer and borne him a brace 
of sturdy children. How Jack employed his long sojourn in 
the gayest capital of Europe it is impossible to tell with cer- 
tainty, though it is very easy to guess, seeing that he left the 
whole of his money behind him, for which he brought back in 
exchange a shabby, braided suit of French cut, a prodigious 
crop of whisker and moustache, and an indescribable jargon of 
gasconading and slang gallicisms, intelligible to no one beyond 
the clique of roues and gamblers into whose hands it was 
plain that he had eventually fallen, and who, pigeon as he 
was, had plucked him to the last feather. 

It was now that he received his first lesson in that science 
which many are so unwilling to learn, and pay so dearly for 
learning — knowledge of the world. His old master, the law- 
yer, upon whom he sought to quarter himself as an in-door 
clerk, dismissed him with a rather candid explanation of five 
minutes' length ; and his guardians, to whom he applied for a 
loan wherewith to establish himself in his father's business, 
sneered at the proposal, and asked him whether it was likely 
that if he could not take care of his own money he could take 
care of theirs ? Jack trod the high ropes, and breaking away 
in a storm of passion, flew to the honest farmer who had mar- 
ried his sister, with whom he took up his abode as a guest. 
From a guest, honoured and cherished, accommodated with a 
nag, and indulged in all kinds of rural sports, he descended 
by degrees, as his welcome wore out, to " one of the family," 
then to a cumbersome inmate, always uselessly in the way, 
and finally to a pest whom it was indispensable to get rid of. 
Jack, whose perceptions were none of the most acute, would 



110 CTTEI03ITIES OF LOXDOX LITE. 

have hung on to the last, but for the representations of his 
sister, who enlightened him as to the true state of the case, 
and who advised him to go to London, and find employment 
by which he could maintain himself. As she backed this 
advice with the offer of a loan of twenty pounds, probably at 
the suggestion of her husband, who would have purchased 
Jack's absence at ten times the amount, her proposal was 
accepted, and Jack, mounting the night coach, dropped from 
its roof one fine morning in the spring of 1838, with his for- 
tune to make among the millions of struggling individuals all 
striving in pursuit of the same end. 

Twice seven years have passed away since then, and Jack 
has made his fortune — made it as thoroughly as man can be 
said to make anything which he does not actually manufacture 
with his hands. Were we to trace the process through which 
he has arrived at the consummation of the four triangular 
deal boards in which he buries himself alive for the benefit of 
Messrs. "Welt and Felt, and for the modest consideration they 
award him, we should find that his progress for the last four- 
teen years has been a series of successive failures, each of 
which deposited him a step lower on the social ladder ; and 
we should find too that one and all resulted from the absence 
of qualities which he ought to have possessed, and which 
every man is bound to possess, to preserve, and to cultivate. 
As a clerk, his first employment, he failed from want of punc- 
tuality and attention ; as a shopman, from want of politeness, 
and, it is to be feared, of integrity as well ; as a town-travel- 
ler, from want of activity and good temper ; as a cabman, 
from want of sobriety ; as an omnibus conductor, from want 
of patience and civility; — and so on and on, and down and 
down, until circumstances, which he would never take the 
trouble to mould for himself, have shuffled him into his timber 
coil, and made him a perambulating four-sided puffing machine 
— a wandering variation of a bill-sticker's hoarding — a living 
substitute for a dead wall. 



AN EXTINGUISHER. Ill 

It often happens that a man serves for the moral of his own 
history ; and thns it is with Jack Rattle. To those who know 
him, and it may be to those who do not, his appearance in his 
large-lettered garb in the public streets is suggestive of other 
and very different things than Wellington boots, at nine and 
four-pence a pair. Though but on the verge of forty, want 
and wretchedness have done upon him the work of years, have 
bowed his head and furrowed his once handsome face, in which 
the expression of a miserable content with a miserable lot for- 
bids the beholder to indulge a hope that, by his own exertions 
at least, he will ever emancipate himself from it. Imagination 
sees in him a melancholy spectacle of a ruined life, a departed 
existence, coffined above-ground — the wandering ghost of a 
buried ambition — " doomed for a certain time to walk the 
earth" as an incarnate Puff. 



112 



BOB, THE MABKET-GBOOM. 



It is impossible to pay much, attention to the study of the 
popular character, as it is so variously developed among the 
very lowest ranks of society, without occasionally recognising 
among them that force of determination and persevering energy 
which, when it characterises men in the higher and educated 
classes, leads them on to fortune and reputation. There is an 
order of minds who under any circumstances will act for 
themselves ; they are the moral antitheses of those drones of 
society who are always waiting for something to turn zip in 
their favour. The men of action have no appetite for waiting 
at all, and no very particular relish, perhaps, for anything that 
turns up. They are, in a sense, artificers of their own fortune, 
and they love the fruits of their own labour far better than any 
unearned luxuries doled out to them from the rich man's table. 
The observer of manhood, who has not seen this spirit exem- 
plified in the very lowest grade of industrial life, has not tho- 
roughly studied his subject. These remarks may serve, perhaps 
not inappropriately, to introduce the out-of-door history of Bob, 
(we do not know his patronymic,) the market-groom. 

It must be eight or nine years ago since we first encoun- 
tered Bob, in Street, Covent Garden, in one of our 

early morning rambles. "Who he was, or where he came from, 
we never knew. On his first appearance, he was a grimy, 
half- starved, little tatterdemalion, without a shirt, a shoe, or 



BOB, THE MAEKET-GE003I. 113 

a hat, and with six months' growth of matted raven hair, 
through the lank and thatchy locks of which a pair of vivid 
eyes flashed from as pallid and hungry a face as ever child of 
eleven years of age bared to an adverse destiny. He seemed 
as if just dropped from some forlorn planet into a world of 
strangers, amongst whom he looked wildly and eagerly around 
— not for favour or the relief of alms, but for work — work, 
and bread, though but a crust, in return. We marked his 
constant and earnest applications for employment of any sort, 
at any wage, and his utter insensibility to rebuke and rebuff, 
however violently and abusively bestowed. Through the mud, 
rain, fog, sleet, and slush of the dark winter mornings, with 
bare feet and unsheltered head, he toiled and moiled, and 
tugged and laboured, for the chance of a penny, the price of 
his breakfast, for which he often waited many a weary hour, 
hungering patiently beneath a wintry sky. Unlike his nume- 
rous congeners — the ragged tribes who frequent the market, 
and rove from one point to another in search of a job whenever 
it may offer — the boy had the sense to confine his exertions 
to one locality, where, in the course of a few months, his un- 
broken good temper and unwearying willinghood earned him 
a welcome, and procured him employment. From being a 
sort of butt upon whom the dealers expended their small wit, 
he grew by degrees into a favourite, and by some unaccount- 
able means actually got into a pair of serviceable hob-nailed 
Bluchers before the winter was over ; and having had his hair 
cut by a charitable barber, who did it for nothing, on condition 
that Bob should carry off the whole crop in his basket, so that 
room might be left in his shop for succeeding customers ; and 
having then invested sixpence in a jaunty cap, cocked know- 
ingly on one side of his head — he came out in a new cha- 
racter. The hungry look had vanished from his face, and given 
place to a merry one ; and his activity, upon which there were 
now more demands, was greater than ever. He improved in 
looks, and in circumstances too, rapidly ; the genial spring and 



114 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

summer atmosphere of the market, and the early rising which 
his calling enforced, agreed with him so well, that before the 
gooseberries were all gone, a shirt positively sprouted out from 
under his new fustian waistcoat. 

Bob, finding by this time that he had got a character for 
honesty, and feeling no doubt that he deserved it, wisely 
resolved to turn it to the best account. In the course of his 
market experience he had observed the necessity which the 
dealers, green-grocers, retailers, and costers were under of 
leaving their carts in the streets, sometimes at a great distance 
from the market, while they were absent negotiating their 
purchases. This practice, though unavoidable, was attended 
with risk and damage, from want of supervision, and often too 
from the wanton mischief or dishonesty of the urchins left in 
charge of the vehicles. Having duly conned the matter over 
in his mind, Bob all at once started in a new speculation. He 
abandoned his various functions of fetcher and carrier and 
supernumerary porter, began a canvass among all the traders 
frequenting his side of the market, to the whole of whom he 
was personally known, offering to take charge of their vehicles 
during their absence, and to guarantee the security of their 
stock, for the smallest mentionable charge per head. The 
tried character of the lad, and his known kindness to animals, 
whom he could not help instinctively fondling, soon procured 
him plenty of customers ; and he was in a few days regularly 
installed in office as the custodier of the horse and ass- drawn 
chariots of the market. 

Thus it was that Bob became groom of the market, a profes- 
sion, be it observed, which he built up for himself, and in 
which, though he has now many imitators and rivals, he has 
no compeer. He is to Covent Garden, or at least to one of the 
many arteries branching from it, what the waterman is to the 
cab-stand. He may be seen before dawn all the year round 
busy at his vocation. ]S"o sooner does the first cart drive up, 
though the sun is yet an hour below the horizon, than he is on 



BOB, THE MABKET-GEOO^r. 115 

the spot to receive the whip from the hand of the owner. He 
shoulders the whips as the symbol of his authority, and marches 
under a complete fagot of them by the time the traffic has fairly 
set in. When a dealer has completed his purchases, and wants 
to be off, all he has to do is to shout with lusty lungs, " Yo 
ho, Bob!" and in an instant you may see the long whip-lashes 
streaming horizontally through the air as Bob answers the 
cry and hurries towards his patron. The whips are all 
marked with the names of the owners, and as Bob has learned 
to read at the Sunday-school, and knows them pretty well from 
long acquaintance, but little time is lost in finding the right 
owner of each. 

The reader is not to imagine that the subject of our sketch 
enjoys anything like a sinecure. If it were a sinecure, we have 
a suspicion that it would not suit him at all. It is something 
very much the contrary. In the first place, he has to exercise 
a constant surveillance to see that the army of donkeys, horses, 
and ponies do not get out of the rank and block up the way, 
which must be left free on either side ; and this requires his 
frequent presence in all parts of his domain. In the next 
place, when fruit is ripe, it is tempting to juvenile palates, and 
there is a young gang of smugglers continually on the look-out 
for contraband pippins or unsentinelled gooseberries; against 
these Bob plays the part of the preventive service, and some- 
times (we have seen him do it) leads them gently out of tempta- 
tion by the ear. Then again, donkeys, who have, unfortunately 
for Bob, no moral principles, are very much given to munching 
one another's turnips, or the turnips of one another's masters, 
which is very much the same thing ; and it must be confessed, 
that as they sometimes stand for hours together, each with his 
head in his neighbour's cart — the carts being well loaded with 
fruit or vegetables — the temptation may well be more than 
untaught donkeyhood can stand. Over these Bob has to keep 
a vigilant eye, and to teach them the virtues of abstinence and 
self-denial. In this task he is seen to exercise a praiseworthy 



116 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

patience. Though armed with fifty whips, he is never known 
to beat an animal ; he may be seen now and then polishing the 
sleek ear of a pet ''moke" with the cuff of his coat, but never 
ill-using one. His admonitory ejaculation of "Ha! would 
you ?" launched at the head of an offender, is sufficient to bring 
the most predatory beast among them to a temporary sense of 
honesty. Prom a long and intimate acquaintance with his 
long-eared friends, he knows well enough those upon whom 
he can rely, and he will locate them, if possible, accordingly. 
A brute, naturally unprincipled, upon whom admonition is 
thrown away, finds himself drawn up with his nose against the 
tail of a tall wagon, where, like many a biped correspondingly 
situated, he is virtuous from necessity ; or, wanting this con- 
venience, Bob will envelop his head in an empty nose-bag, 
through which he would find it a difficult matter to make a 
surreptitious meal upon his neighbour's cabbages. Our hero 
thinks no trouble too great which tends to the improved per- 
formance of his function, and the consequence is that he reaps 
credit, and ready money too, from performing it well. 

Bob has grown in stature as years have rolled over his head : 
from a miserable starveling and friendless child, pinched in 
stomach and stunted in growth, he is transformed into a decent, 
well-spoken, and responsible man, known and trusted by hun- 
dreds, and dependent on no one for the comforts of life. Poor, 
indeed, he is — and poor, in one sense of the word, he is likely 
to remain. It is but little that is to be got by turning out of 
bed an hour or two after midnight, and playing the part of 
gentleman usher to a caravanserai of horses and asses, up to 
the hour when portly respectability sits down to coffee, eggs, 
breakfast bacon and the morning paper — little indeed — a hand- 
ful of coppers at the most ; but if competence is won by it — 
if independence is won by it — if a clear conscience and a 
contented mind are retained under it — and if a love for God's 
dumb creatures is gratified and cherished by it — it may be 
worth the doing, in spite of the sneers of the over wise. 



117 



THE EILLSTICKEE. 



The subject of our present sketch is a personage of no small 
importance, and of that, by the way, judging by his despotic 
management of a coterie of small boys usually to be found at 
his heels, no one is more fully conscious than himself. He 
may be said to live in the eye of the public as much, if not 
more, than any other man of his day ; and is, whatever pre- 
tenders may choose to think, or cavillers to say to the con- 
trary, essentially a public character. He is a literary man in 
a sense at once the most literal and extensive, and he caters for 
the major part of the population almost the only literature 
that they ever peruse. He is a publisher to boot, whose 
varied and voluminous works, unscathed by criticism, are read 
by all the world, and go through no end of editions. It is an 
axiom of somebody's — whose, we forget just now — that most 
men look at the world, and all things in it, through the me- 
dium of their own profession. If that be the case ; how does 
the billsticker regard it ? what tricks does his fancy play him. ? 
what are the myths ever revolving before his imagination ? Is 
there a golden age looming in the distant future of his hopes ? 
a good time coming, when every wall and hoarding, every 
house-front, window- shutter, and now interdicted inclosure 
— from the " palaces of crowned kings," down to the hum- 
blest " habitations of all things that dwell" — shall be patent 
to his paste-brush, open as charity to his broadsheet, and 



118 CURIOSITIES OP LONDON LIFE. 

when he shall no longer be compelled to trudge beneath 
his heavy load in all weathers, through weary miles of mud 
and rain, in search of a sanctuary where the art and mystery 
of his calling is not forbidden ? "When he sleeps at peace, 
after the labours of the day, does he dream of vast timber- 
hoards in endless perspective, without a single broadside on 
their virgin surfaces, all waiting to receive, in a shower of 
double-royal posters, the contributions of the press ? And if, 
after supping upon apocryphal pork-sausages, he should hap- 
pen to have the nightmare, does the vampire visage of the 
fiend bestriding the paste-pot which sits so heavily on his 
chest, bear on its lurid forehead the dreadful inscription, or 
does it shriek in his horror-stricken ears the terrible accents : 
" Eillstickers, beware ? " 

We cannot respond to these interrogatories. Unfortunately, 
we have not the privilege of his bosom confidences, and have 
been obliged to derive what knowledge we possess with regard 
to him from careful observation, and some small application of 
that inductive system of philosophy recommended by Bacon, 
to which the world owes so much, and by means of which 
what must be is predicated from what is. We have seen the 
billsticker under all the mutations of his humanity : in busy 
times, when his services were well paid, and in slack times, 
when placards grew mouldy on their hoardings for want of 
decent burial; at election times, when Whig, Tory, and 
Radical competed for his patronage ; and in times of general 
distress, when the auctioneer nearly alone monopolised his 
labours. We have seen him at early mom, papering the gable- 
end of a house forty feet aloft ; and at dusty — not dewy — 
eve, with the stealthiness of an Italian pasquinader, planting 
quack-doctor puffs breast-high upon forbidden ground. We 
have seen him, armed with ladder and peel — which, be it 
known, is a pole with a cross-bar on the top of it — prepared 
to fasten his proclamations as high as the chimney-tops ; or 
with paste-pot and hand-bills alone, making a less ambitious 



THE BILLSTICKER. 119 

round of professional calls upon his patients — the dead-Trails. 
There is one singularity in his profession which is a mystery 
to us ; we allude to the fact, which we daresay the reader has 
himself observed, that the billsticker invariably pastes over his 
bills on both sides — that, having stuck them to the wall or 
the hoarding, he is never content with that, but incontinently 
gives them a coat of paste on the outer and printed side as 
well. This, which appears to us a sheer work of supereroga- 
tion, is perhaps mysteriously connected with some important 
element in the process, without which it would be incomplete ; 
but we confess we cannot fathom it, and must leave it to 
future investigators to explain. 

If the billsticker has puzzled us, we have had the satis- 
faction of seeing him puzzled in his turn, and that more than 
once. He is usually sagacious enough in his way, and, as 
much as most men, a dab at his trade, in the prosecution of 
which anything like hesitation on his part is the last thing to 
be observed. But we have seen him charged with announce- 
ments in Hebrew, addressed to our friends the sons of Israel, 
and seriously perplexed, while conning the square letters, as 
to which end of the poster had the most right to stand upper- 
most on the wall ; and we have known him, when the spec- 
tators couldn't help him to a conclusion, to solve the problem 
in a practical way, by placing a couple of copies side by side, 
one on its head, the other on its feet, in accordance, it may be 
supposed, with the prudent maxim, that it is better to lose a 
part than to risk the whole. Some years ago, too, we beheld 
him struggling on a very windy day in the flapping folds of a 
monster- sheet, upon which were printed the two words, in 
letters a foot long each, " "Wheke's Eliza? " and nothing 
more. Who Eliza was he could not inform us, and he shook 
his shaggy head in a way sufficiently ominous when we asked 
for the information. It was evidently a poser, as well for 
him as for us ; and it is a remarkable event in the annals of 
billsticking, that that pertinent inquiry and public interroga- 



120 CUHIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

tion has remained unanswered up to the present moment. 
We should like to know who Eliza was, in order that we 
might become more interested in her whereabouts ; but after 
indulging in painful speculations on the subject, we can come 
to no other conclusion than one which may be nothing more 
than conjecture after all. It may be — we cannot vouch for it 
— but it may be that Eliza is the Christian name of some 
modern Thisbe unhappily lost in the wilderness of this great 
Babylon, for whose restoration her love-lorn and bewildered 
Pyramus distractedly appeals to London Wall through the 
medium of the billsticker. 

Seen in a high wind, the London billsticker presents a pic- 
turesque appearance : his costume, though in accordance with 
no recognised fashion, from being rather frayed and frag- 
mentary, exhibits those characteristic points which the artist 
loves to sketch ; and being, when on his rounds, ponderously 
loaded around the loins with good stowage of damp paper and 
printers' ink, he may be compared, as he struggles sturdily 
forwards "in the eye of the blast," along the soaking street, 
to one of those heavy Dutch bottoms beating down Channel 
against a head-wind, which we see on a gusty day from the 
shore of Kent. Sometimes the weather is too much for him, 
and then, like the good Yrow Yanderdunk, he is obliged to 
run into the nearest port until the storm has blown over. 
E or mere rain he cares nothing — perhaps rather likes it; it 
liquidates his paste, and clears the footpath of idlers, who are 
apt to discommode him in his operations, and who, in fine 
weather, follow him from hoard to hoard with the laudable 
desire of reaping the first-fruits which he disseminates from the 
tree of knowledge. He is the centre of attraction to a peculiar 
do-nothing class, and sometimes is followed at a cautious dis- 
tance by an eccentric satellite, who seems, to derive no end of 
amusement by supplementing his labours in a singular way. 
This genius is one of the small boys before alluded to, who, 
like the sparrows in London streets, are here, there, and 



THE BILLSTICEEE. 121 

everywhere to be met with. He possesses two accomplish- 
ments which he is desirous that the whole world should wit- 
ness and applaud, and he makes our friend of the paste-pot the 
medium of the glorification which he covets and enjoys. Dog- 
ging him to a hoarding or a wall, no sooner has the billsticker 
posted a broadside within his reach, and vanished round the 
corner, than up steps Master Tommy Toes, carefully pulls it 
down while the paste is wet, and sticks it up again wrong 
end upwards ; then, pitching himself suddenly on his hands, 
and quivering his bare heels aloft in the air, he reads the 
whole proclamation through in a loud and sonorous voice, for 
the benefit of all and sundry who may choose to listen. If he 
gets a copper for the performance, so much the better ; if you 
throw him one, he puts it in his mouth, as the most con- 
venient pocket at hand ; but copper or no copper, he jumps 
head upwards again when his feat is accomplished, and looks 
round him with an air of triumph, as much as to say : "Let 
me see you do that, if you can !" It has been suggested to 
us, that this performance of Master Tommy's is but one of the 
multitudinous modifications of the puff-system, resorted to by 
some speculative tradesman, whose agent the boy is, to draw 
attention to his announcements ; but seeing that when the 
policeman appears, Toes incontinently takes to his heels — 
that he has no shoes, no hat, no shirt, and but a shred of a 
jacket, nothing, in short, to boast of but the faculties of 
standing upon his head and reading large print — we reject the 
suspicion as groundless, and unworthy of the respectabilities 
of trade. 

It is not uninteresting to glance at the educational effect of 
the billsticker' s labours upon the mass of the London popula- 
tion. It is well known that among the very lowest order of 
society, the number of adults who can read fluently is alwavs 
much greater on the average of the population in large towns, 
and in the metropolis especially, than it is in rural hamlets 
and villages. This is not owing to the difference in early eclu- 

G 



122 CURIOSITIES OE LOXDON LIFE. 

cation, but to the difference of association in after-life. The 
child of the rustic labourer is as well taught — we are inclined 
to tliink better taught — than the children of the poor bom in 
great cities. Eut of the numbers who learn to read, of the 
purely agricultural class, a very large proportion forget the ac- 
quirement before they grow up to be men — that is, they for- 
get it so far as to make reading a difficulty and not a pleasure ; 
and hence it is that the taste for and the habit of reading is 
so greatly less common with field-labourers than with the cor- 
responding class in towns and cities. Now, it strikes us that 
the billsticker is in no small degree at the bottom of this dif- 
ference. His handiwork stares the public in the face, let 
them turn which way they will ; and it is a sheer impossibility 
for a lad who has once learned the art of reading, to lose it in 
London, unless he be both wilfully blind and destitute of hu- 
man curiosity. To thousands and tens of thousands, the pla- 
carded walls and hoardings of the city are the only school of 
instruction open to them, whence they obtain all the knowledge 
they possess of that section of the world and society which 
does not lie patent to their personal observation. It is thence 
they derive their estimate of the different celebrities — in com- 
merce, in literature, and in art, of the time in which they 
live, and are enabled to become in some measure acquainted 
with the progress of the age. Perhaps few men, even among 
the best educated, could be found who would willingly let 
drop the knowledge they have gained, although without in- 
tending it, from this gratuitous source. 

Thus, then, the billsticker is a public benefactor, and, like 
any man who honestly pursues an honest trade, profits others 
in profiting himself. Eut, like all responsible public func- 
tionaries, he is open to the shafts of slander — liable to the 
breath of detraction. There are not wanting men of no mark, 
fellows never elevated to the paste -pot and peel, who have 
been heard to demand sarcastically, what proportion the 
number of posters which he sticks against the wall bears to 



THE BILLSTICKEB. 123 

the number delivered to him from the printer — what is 
the precise per-centage which satisfies a billsticker' s con- 
science — and what the exact amount of the overplus which 
he sells for waste paper. Let us hope that these dark and 
ugly insinuations are but the offspring of mere malevolence 
and envy, having no real foundation in the practices of the 
profession. It is true we have known parties so mistrustful 
on this score, as to turn their own billstickers upon occasion, 
especially at times when parish politics ran high, and paper- 
war was mercilessly waged upon the walls ; but we cannot 
conscientiously recommend the system of " every man his own 
biHsticker," inasmuch as we have noticed, times without 
number, that bills thus unprofessionally stuck are extremely 
liable to become prematurely overlaid when the legitimate 
operator comes upon his round. Further, it may chance that 
an amateur billsticker may get himself into trouble, through 
ignorance of details with which the regular professional is 
intimately acquainted. Though the majority of hoardings — 
if bill -stickable at all — are free to all paste-pots, that is by 
no means the case with them all. Many which are of long 
standing are private property, and are let in compartments to 
the members of the profession, who of course tolerate no tres- 
passers upon their domains, and would inflict the penalties of 
invasion upon any one caught in the act of violating their 
privileges. To such irregular aspirants to this honourable 
profession we commend the admonition, familiar to us on 
brick- walls and park- enclosures — " Stick no Bills." 



g 2 



124 



THE BEREAVED TBOAIBOKE. 



I hate been for the last dozen years in the habit of walking 
daily to office in one direction, through a line of route 
reaching from a northerly suburb to the heart of the city, and 
back again in the evening, or late at night, as it might hap- 
pen, by the self-same track. During that period, without 
asking a single question, or receiving a tittle of verbal inform- 
ation, I have learned the personal and domestic histories of 
many individuals and families, as well as the rise and manage- 
ment, and the consequent results and issues of a host of specu- 
lations, commercial and other, which have had their progress 
and consummation within the sphere of my continued remark. 
I may chronicle some of these histories when the humour 
seizes me — not now. One dilapidated figure, familiar to my 
morning vision, which he greeted two or three times a week 
for the last ten years, has disappeared for ever, and I dedicate 
this brief page to his remembrance. Tor the last twelve 
weary months he has figured periodically in the vicinity of 

Square, as a butt — a walking target for the stray shafts 

of the vagabond wit of a gaping and jibing crowd; and, in- 
deed, a stranger to his history might well have been excused 
fo^ joining in the laugh of the multitude. There is, however, 
too often food for melancholy in the forms which excite our 
mirth. Smiles and sadness not unfrequently live together; 
and some of the vicissitudes incidental to humanity at times 



THE BEEEAVED TE0MB0NE. 125 

present themselves to view under such strange and anomalous 
aspects, that whether we ought to laugh or to weep, to banter 
or to sympathise, it is next to impossible to tell. 

The defunct subject of this short memorial wandered for 
the last year of his life as a solo player on the trombone. Such 
a performance was unique in the history of street minstrelsy, 
and though anything but vivacious in itself, was the cause of 
infinite vivacity in others. The very first intonations from 
his dreary tube were a signal for a general gathering of the 
idling youngsters of the neighbourhood, amongst whom, in 
ragged but majestic altitude, stood the forlorn performer, 

- 

filling the air with the sepulchral tones of his instrument. 
His dismal, dolorous, and almost denunciatory strain, drew 
forth ironical cheers and bravos from his grinning audience ; 
and their persecuting demands for " Paddy Carey," or "Rory 
0' Moore," were answered by a deep-toned wail from the sono- 
rous brass, giving mournful utterance to emotions far different 
from theirs. To me, and perhaps to others to whom the poor 
fellow's historv was known, there was little cause for mirth 
in the spectacle he presented. Let the reader judge. 

It is now full ten years ago that, as I drew near Square, 

one fine spring morning on my way to business, I heard, for 
the first time, the exhilarating strains of a brass band ; the 
instruments were delicately voiced, and harmonised to a de- 
gree of perfection not too common among out-of-door practi- 
tioners. My ear, not unused to the pleasing intricacies of 
harmony, apprised me that a quintett was going forward, com- 
posed of two cornets-a-piston, a piccola flute, a French horn, 
and a trombone. The strain was new, at least to me, and of 
a somewhat wild and eccentric character. Upon coming up 
with the band, I beheld five tall, erect, and soldier-looking 
figures, " bearded like the pard," and with some remaining in- 
dications of military costume yet visible in their garb. I set 
them down for Poles, and learned afterwards that my con- 
jecture was the true one. They were all men of middle age ; 



126 CURIOSITIES OE LOXDO^" LTEE. 

and from the admirable unity and precision of their per- 
formance, it was plain that they had even then been long 
associated together. For two years I enjoyed at regular in- 
tervals, in my morning walks, the delightful solace of their 
harmonious utterances — and have been conscious more than 
once, of marching a pas de soldat, under the influence of the 
spirit-stirring sounds, to the drudgery of labour, as though 
there were a heroism (who says there is not ?) in facing it 
manfully. At the commencement of the third year, I missed 
one of the cornets- a-pist on ; and knew within a month after, 
by the appearance of a ligature of black crape, displayed not 
upon the heads, but upon the left arms of the survivors, that 
he had blown his last blast, and finally dissolved partnership 
with his brethren. 

Still quartetts are delightful ; and though that peculiar and 
piquant undercurrent of accompaniment which makes awell- 
played quintett such a honne-bouche to the amateur was ever 
afterwards wanting, yet was their performance perfect of its 
kind, and left no cause for cavil, however much there might 
have been for regret. But the grim tyrant seldom contents 
himself with a single victim ; and in something more than a 
year after there was another void in the harmony — the French 
horn had gently breathed his own requiem, and reduced the 
band to a trio. This was a far worse loss than the first, and 
one that completely altered the character of their minstrelsy. 
They had fallen from their high estate, and were compelled 
to take new ground and less pretentious standing. They 
abandoned almost entirely — one may conceive with what re- 
gret — their own cherished national harmonies, and took up 
with the popular music of the metropolis — the current and 
ephemeral airs of the day. To these, however, they added a 
new charm by the exquisite precision of their execution, and 
an agreeable spice of foreign accentuation, which they natu- 
rally imparted to our matter-of-fact musical phraseology. 
They became popular favourites, and for several years went 



THE BEEEAVED TEOMOXE. 127 

their accustomed rounds, everywhere rewarded with, the com- 
mendations and coins of the crowd. Their imperturbable 
gravity and dignity of demeanour was a pleasant set-off to 
their rollicking version of some of the pet melodies of the 
mob, and contributed not a little to procure them a degree of 
favour and prosperity perhaps greater than they had ever 
previously enjoyed. They never forsook their old haunts, and 
I heard them regularly on the usual days, not, certainly, with 
the same delight as at first, yet often with a feeling of grati- 
fied surprise that so much grace could be imparted to airs 
which the "Aminadabs that grind the music-boxes' ' in the 
streets of London had so mercilessly and so successfully con- 
spired, first to murder and then to mutilate. 

Time wore on ; year after year the gray and grizzled tri- 
umvirate trod their daily rounds in all weathers, arousing the 
liberality of their patrons with the merry music of the hour. 
Three, four, five years passed away — five harmonious years ; 
and then death snatched the second cornet in the midst of his 
strain, and dashed him to the earth with a semibreve on his 
lips — lips condemned to be mute for evermore. The poor 
fellow was seized with the cholera while in the very heart of 
a melody, and had departed to the silent land almost before 
its echoes had died away. Whatever was the grief of the 
remaining pair, like true veterans as they were, they gave no 
evidence of it to the world. As they would have done on the 
battle-field, they did now — closed up their little rank, and 
confronted the enemy with the force that was yet remaining. 
But it was a sad spectacle, and, what was worse for them, it 
was but sorry music they made. With piccola and trombone, 
the two extremes of harmony, what indeed could be done ? 
Orpheus and Apollo themselves would have made a failure of 
it. It was the harmonic tree with only root and foliage — 
the trunk and branches all swept away ; or a dinner of soup 
and pudding, the intermediate dishes being wanting; or the 
play of "Hamlet," with none but the prating Polonius and the 



128 CTJEIOSITEES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

Ghost for dramatis personce. In short, it wouldn't do ; and 
the poor fellows soon found it out. They fell into neglect and 
poverty, and save among those who dwelt in the line of their 
regular beat, who now gave from sympathy what they had 
once bestowed from gratification, they met with but spare en- 
couragement. It could not last long. Whether the piccola 
had too much to do, and sunk overborne by the responsibility 
of the various parts he represented, or whether he blew him- 
self out in a fit of sheer mortification, I cannot pretend to say. 
True it is, however, that he also, in a few short months, dis- 
appeared from the scene, and the bereaved trombone was left 
to wander alone among the haunts of his old companions. 

For twelve months, as I have already said, had he thus 
wandered, growling from his dismal instrument a monotonous 
requiem to the manes of his departed brethren. I have reason 
for believing, that at the decease of his last friend he forsook 
the light and frivolous music which circumstances had com- 
pelled them to administer to the mob, and returned to the 
wilder and grander themes of his country and his youth ; but 
as it requires an experienced ear to tell the business a man is 
after who plays a solo on a trombone, I cannot pretend to 
certainty on that point. He never condescended to take the 
least notice of the crowd of scapegrace idlers who stood 
around, mimicking his motions, and raising discordant groans 
in rivalry of his tones. He played on with an air of abstracted 
dignity ; and one might have thought that, instead of the 
jibes and jeers of the blackguard mob, he heard nothing but 
the rich instrumental accompaniments of his buried com- 
panions, and that memory reproduced in full force to his 
inner sense the complete and magnificent harmonies in all 
their thrilling and soul- stirring eloquence, as they rung 
through the same echoes in the years past and gone. He 
persevered to the last in treading the same ground that was 
trod bv his brethren : it was all that was left to him of them 
and of their past lives. He had indeed experienced the 



THE BEREAVED TROMBONE. 129 

hardest fate of the whole five. He was the flitting ghost of 
the buried band — a melancholy memorial of extinct harmo- 
nies. There was a painful discrepancy between his history 
and his action : the sudden and fierce elongation of his brazen 
tube, as he shot it violently forth to double the octave at the 
penultimate note of his wailing stave, but ill accorded with 
the mournful recollections of which he was the solitary monu- 
ment. There was a visible discord between his griefs and his 
gestures, his woes and his utterances of them, which trans- 
formed the very fount of melancholy into an argument for 
mirth. Prom a position so painfully equivocal, I, for one, 
can rejoice that he has at length been beckoned away. There 
is none to mourn his departure, and, beyond this brief testi- 
mony, no record that he ever was. Requiescat ! 



a 3 



1 30 



THE CITY TOLL-MAIN 7 . 



It is a long while since the toll-gates, which once barricaded 
the approaches to the city of London proper, finally disap- 
peared from the pnblic ways. The localities, where they once 
barred the road to the traveller who used any other means of 
locomotion than those with which he was naturally provided, 
are now not easily identified. It is probable, however, that 
the toll-gates stood very near the spots where were the gates 
of the ancient city when London was a walled capital. If so, 
their sites would be indicated, though with no very great pre- 
cision, by the situation on the map of Aldgate, Aldersgate, 
Bishopsgate, etc., etc., in former times the gates of the old 
surrounding fortification. But city walls and gates, and toll- 
bars too, have all been swept away by the rushing stream of 
commerce ; yet though the material obstacles have vanished 
long ago, the pecuniary one remains. Tested interests, 
stronger than stone walls, endure in full vigour when these 
have crumbled to decay ; and from this cause it is that, though 
the toll-man has been long ago turned out of house and home, 
he is not yet turned out of office, but continues to levy his 
exactions after he has been deprived of all semblance of au- 
thority, and of all show of right to the tax to which he lays 
claim. 

The houseless and unsheltered functionary, who at the 
present day represents the corporation of London in their 



THE CITY TOLL-MAN. 131 

capacity of highway tax-gatherers, is a very forlorn-looking 
individual, who has to do battle for his levies, occasionally at 
a disadvantage, with any man who chooses to play the recu- 
sant ; and, to say the truth, his adversaries are by no means 
few. He is a man evidently born to contend with opposition, 
and to get the better of it. He has in his time rubbed 
shoulders with so many discomforts, that it is a question 
whether he would feel at home without them. He is a 
weather-worn subject, somewhat wiry-faced and hard-featured, 
and with a figure thin enough almost to find shelter to leeward 
of a gas-lamp, and active enough to run down a fast-trotting 
horse in less time than it would take to saddle him. His oc- 
cupation is no sinecure ; he has to be thoroughly awake every 
day and all day long. Homer may nod, but not he ; unless 
he choose to pay for it by the loss of income. His whole 
career in office is a continuous and praiseworthy example of 
" the pursuit of halfpence under difficulties." In this pursuit 
he is constantly baffied, but then he is as constantly successful. 
If half of his unwilling vassals elude him, the other half pay 
him the hard cash ; so that if he gets a grievance one minute, 
he gathers compensation the next. He is liable to be cheated 
every hour, and undergoes that penalty many times a day ; 
but he has not time to grumble, and, more than that, does not 
think of grumbling, but looks the sharper after the next comer. 
His occupation has taught him some practical philosophy. 
He knows the value of good temper and the folly of resent- 
ments. He is a civil fellow in the main, and will answer 
your questions readily enough ; but you must not expect him 
to look you in the face : his eyes are ever on the highway, 
and if he shoots off like a rocket in the middle of a response, 
it is because he has a reason for it — at least in perspective. 
Sometimes, when the day has been unproductive, he will 
avenge the delinquency of one defaulter by the persecution of 
another — hunting him down with great pertinacity, and fol- 
lowing him from street to street, leaving the way clear 



132 CrEIOSITZES OF loxdox life. 

meanwhile to all who may come. This is an imprudence, 
however, of which he is seldom guilty, because it is one which 
brings its immediate penalty. 

The reader who would like to catch a glimpse of this active 
subject must look for him in some one of the thoroughfares of 
commerce, just at the point which marks the limits of the 
corporation domains. If he have a map of London in which 
the city proper is marked by a different colour, he will see at 
a glance all the inlets and outlets which have to be guarded 
and taxed by the toll-man. Thus there is one at Holborn-hill, 
whose occupation can be no sinecure, seeing that he has to do 
the duty of three imaginary five-barred gates, placed, one at 
Shoe-lane, one at Farringdon- street, and one at Snow- hill. 
There is another pluralist, who stands at the west-end of Fleet- 
street, keeping one eye constantly on Temple -bar and another 
on Chancery-lane. They are all authorised and enjoined to 
collect twopence from the drivers of all vehicles, not belonging 
to freemen of London, bringing goods into the city. The 
principal city toll- man is, or was, a speculating Jew, who 
rents the whole of the tolls from the corporation. He sup- 
plies his assistants with tickets, which, like turnpike tickets 
elsewhere, are delivered to the drivers who pay the toll. 
"Whether he pays his inferiors by stated salaries, or sells them 
the tickets at a discount, we are not in a condition to certify ; 
but judging from the indefatigable efforts of some of them in 
the prosecution of their profession — seeing how recklessly 
they dash into the torrent of rushing vehicles, heedless of 
horses' hoofs and rattling wheels, after a driver who turns a 
deaf ear to their challenge — we are inclined to suspect that 
they have in some way or other a personal interest in the cap- 
ture of every identical twopence. Be this as it may, the 
toll-man evidently reaps no great emolument from his pro- 
fession, which is far more wearisome and laborious than it is 
profitable. Upon his first appointment, he is generally seen 
gaping about him in a state of anxious bewilderment, half 



THE CITY TOLL-MAN. 133 

uncertain upon whom to levy his unwelcome tax. By the 
time that he has got the freemen's carts by heart, and learned 
to distinguish his lawful victims, he has usually made the 
discovery that his vocation is intolerably exacting, and not to 
he endured. We never knew one of them stand the ordeal 
many years. A man who would get through such a function 
well is generally deserving of something better ; and anything 
is better than a perpetual tramp out-of-doors in all weathers 
after flying twopences, in which he has but the merest frac- 
tional interest, if he have any at all. So it comes to pass 
that he looks out for repose in some other calling ; and, 
mounted on the step of an omnibus as a conductor, or stuck 
into a cabin reared in the mud of the Thames as pay- taker 
for a penny steamer, he congratulates himself that he no longer 
runs himself out of breath after the corporation coppers. 

It is not easy to come at the origin of these city tolls. There 
is, however, a charter granted to the mayor and citizens of 
London by Henry IV., which throws some light upon the 
subject. This charter was bestowed in return for the loyal 
assistance they rendered to the king in the matter of the con- 
spiracy and rebellion in which his throne and life were 
attempted, in the first year of his reign, by the Abbot of 
Westminster, the Dukes of Albemarle, Surrey, and Exeter, 
the Earls of Gloucester and Salisbury, the Bishop of Carlisle, 
and Sir Thomas Blount. The conspiracy was discovered by 
accident, and the rebellion in which it prematurely exploded 
was quelled by the promptitude of the mayor of London, 
who supplied Henry with six thousand citizens completely 
armed. These were soon increased, by volunteers from the 
neighbourhood, to the number of twenty thousand. The rebel 
army was overthrown, and their leaders soon after taken and 
executed. The charter, which bears date the 25th Hay, 
1399, confers, among other privileges, upon "the said citi- 
zens, their heirs and successors, the custody as well of the 
gates of Xewgate and Ludgate as all other the gates and pos- 



134 CURIOSITIES OF LOKDOX LIFE. 

terns of the same city." The charter, however, does not 
make mention of the sums to be levied as tolls at the said 
gates and posterns ; and it would be absurd to suppose that 
there is any prescriptive right so ancient as the charter for 
subjecting each vehicle to the charge of twopence — a sum 
which in those days would have purchased a joint of meat. 

That those tolls have been often the pretence for fraudulent 
exactions we may gather from the following record, pre- 
served in the city memorials : — In the year 1743, one An- 
thony "Wright brought an action against the lessee of one 
of the gates, who by his plea insisted on a prescriptive right 
to receive twopence for the passage of each cart laden with 
goods and merchandise amounting to the weight of one ton 
and upwards. It appeared, however, by the evidence, that 
the usage had been to take a penny only for a cart with two 
horses, however heavily laden ; and a verdict was given for 
the plaintiff against the lessee. 

We conceive the time is not far distant when the good 
sense of the corporation of London will lead to the final abo- 
lition of the city tolls, which, besides being a nuisance, must 
operate in some degree against the interests of commerce, 
which it is to their especial advantage to promote. 



35 



"AN" HONEST PEMT." 



It is interesting to remark the various shifts and contrivances, 
the resorts of a very humble species of ingenuity, to which 
some of the right-minded poor by whom we are surrounded 
have recourse, in order to procure what they proudly and inde- 
pendently term " an honest penny." It is gratifying to know 
that there is a very large section of the lowest ranks to whom 
the feeling of dependence upon others and the practices of dis- 
honesty are equally hateful and repugnant ; and it is impos- 
sible not to sympathise with the persevering endeavours of 
many of this class whom society seems, from some accident or 
other, to have pushed aside from the beaten paths of labour 
and its deserved emoluments ; and who are left to make their 
way in the world in the strict and literal sense of the term — 
seeing that they have first to invent a calling before they can 
pursue it. How much physical energy and good moral deter- 
mination some of them bring to bear upon this praiseworthy 
undertaking, the following brief sketches, drawn from the life, 
may assist in showing. 

THE IRISH MACHINE. 

Terence O'Donough is an Irishman whom a fortunate fate 
has united to an English wife. When I first knew Terry he 
was in the enviable position of a hanger-on at the underground 



136 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

warehouse of a small printing-office, where two or three minor 
monthly publications were rolled off from a machine in a 
cellar, the motive-power of which was supplied by a steam- 
engine in an adjoining factory. Terry's whole fortune con- 
sisted in his wife, who plied as a basket -woman in Covent 
Garden, and his own broad back, which he carried steadily 
under the pressure of three hundred weight ; to which might 
be added a temper insensible to provocation, and an appetite 
which, owing to " his riverence, Father Matthew/' who had 
cured him of whisk}- drinking, was a match for anything eat- 
able under the sun. Terry's wife, whom he always addressed 
as "me darlint," was in every respect the " dacent ooman " he 
was fond of calling her ; and she was not a little proud of her 
Herculean spouse, as anybody might see who observed her 
watching him as he devoured the monstrous boiling of pota- 
toes which she brought him regularly at one o'clock, and which, 
with a draught of water from the pump in the court-yard, 
constituted his unvarying dinner. I question if the good 
woman herself lived upon anything better : it was Terry's 
boast that he had made her, like himself, a " taytotalman 
intirely," and that "iver since, wi' the biessin' of iven, they 
hadn't wanted for nothin' at all at all." Terry had no regular 
engagement; his earnings were limited to fetchings and carry- 
ings, and running of errands ; and when he had nothing to do 
he had nothing to receive. His average receipts were rather 
under than over a pound a month ; and his wife, according to 
his own account, which I believe was the true one, earned 
about half as much ; but she made his home comfortable to 
him, kept his little garret as " clane as the blue sky ;" and if 
Terry had any wish in the world, you may be sure the image 
of his wife was shut up in the centre of it. 

And, to tell the truth, Terry had his wishes; and they 
were, like those of all honest hard workers — for constant em- 
ployment and a larger income. How to bring about their 
realisation was the question. An untaught Irishman, bred in 



THE IEISH MACHINE. 137 

the bogs of Connaught, without education and without a call- 
ing, what could he do to improve his condition ? There was 
no human rival whom he could supplant by superior qualifi- 
cations. Even the little •printer's devils, who gallopped up and 
down stairs, and ran about the warehouse, had all "got the 
larnin', and could rade a printed book out and out," while he 
did not know " sorrow a letther." " 'Tisn't the larnin' will 
do my business anyhow," said he to himself. "Eedad, if I 
was but a stame-ingin, it's a pound a week they'd be afther 
givin' me. Arrah now ! that's what I call a diskivery. Sure 
I'll be the stame-ingin, and do it half-price, if the masther will 
ounly hear rayson !" So Terry watched his opportunity, and 
one day when the steam ran short, as it invariably did on the 
Saturday, he boldly volunteered to supersede the steam-engine, 
" if the masther would put a handle to the mill," and drive it 
clean through the week for a less sum than he paid to the 
proprietor of the steam. Terry's proposition was at first 
laughed at as absurd, as the power required was considered far 
too great for one man to supply continuously. Repeated de- 
falcations, however, on the part of Terry's rival, the steam- 
engine, at length induced the printer to listen to his offer. A 
handle was fitted to the machine, and Terry was offered half- 
a- crown a day for keeping it going. The experiment suc- 
ceeded admirably. The contest between flesh and blood, bones 
and sinews, on the one side, and cast-iron on the other, was for 
once decided in favour of the former. The snorting, fire- 
eating rival was cashiered, and sent about his proper business ; 
and from that day to this the arms of Terence O'Donough, with 
some occasional assistance from his wife, have supplied the 

motive-power to the printing-machine in Court. From 

long practice, Terry now makes comparatively light work of 
his ponderous task. During the hot summer weather his wife 
makes her appearance in the afternoon, and laying hold of the 
same handle, proves herself a worthy helpmate to her toiling 
spouse. More than once have I seen Terry fast asleep on the 



138 curiosities or loxdox life. 

floor, after working half trie night, while his wife, grinding 
away, kept the concern going at the accnstomed pace. The 
steam-proprietor is the only loser by the bargain; Terry's 
employer saves 20 per cent, by the exchange ; Terry himself 
has trebled his earnings ; and both he and his wife are con- 
fidently looking forward to the accumulation of sufficient 
capital for a start in the " general line," including " murphies 
and black-diamonds," which is to lead them onwards and up- 
wards to respectability and fortune. 

BTOOHNCt POETESS. 

Eeturning lately from a visit to the Principality, I arrived 
by the Great Western Railway at the Padclington terminus. 
Throwing my portmanteau on the top of an omnibus bound for 
the Bank, I mounted myself by the side of it, and in a few 
minutes we were en route for the city. "We had not yet 
entered upon the jS"ew Road ere I became aware that the 
omnibus, which was crowned with luggage, was accompanied 
on its journey by no less than six young lads, the eldest not 
above seventeen, who, running at the side or in the rear of the 
vehicle, kept up with it the whole way. I noticed that if one 
of them caught my eye, he made a motion of touching his hat 
— though not a semblance of a hat or of a shoe either was to 
be found among the whole party — and executed a kind of 
shambling bow, which, being performed at the speed of six or 
seven miles an hour, appeared a rather comic species of polite- 
ness. I asked the driver the meaning of this curious cortege, 
" Them poor young 'uns, sir," said he, "isarnin' what I calls 
a regular hard penny. They are a-lookin' out arter the lug- 
gage ; and because they runs it down all the way from the 
railway, they thinks they got a right to the porterage. When 
we drops a passenger and a portmanteau together you'll see 
the move. The fust man (they goes in reg'lar turns) will 
shoulder the luggage, and pocket the browns for carrin' of it 



BinsnrarG porteks. 1 9 

home. He as lias the last turn will have to run perhaps all 
the way to the Bank — a good four mile the way we go. They 
gits what they can, and takes their chance whatever it is. 
Sometimes they're done altogether. A boy may foller the 'bus 
all the way on the hunt arter a gentleman's luggage, and never 
git it at last — 'cause why, d'ye see, a cab may take it out of 
his mouth, or a kind-hearted swell may think that a chap as 
will run four miles arter a trunk, is perhaps likely to bolt with 
it when he's got it. 'Tis all a chance. I wish 'em better 
luck, that's all." "A hard penny indeed," thought I ; " and 
a proof that these poor, ragged vagabonds are willing at any 
rate to get one honestly, if they can." 

The first passenger with luggage got out at Tottenham 
Court Eoad ; his baggage was hauled from the roof and lifted 
upon the shoulders of one of our running attendants by the 
conductor, who seemed to look upon the ceremony as a matter 
of course. Away marched the little bare-legged Atlas at the 
heels of the passenger towards the Hampstead Eoad, and the 
omnibus proceeded on its route accompanied by the remaining 
five. The next stoppage was at Euston Square ; and the 
porterage, being only from the omnibus to the North- Western 
Railway station, was but a twopenny job. At King's Cross 
we discharged another passenger, and lost another ragged 
attendant. At the Angel, Islington, two more disappeared ; 
and the vehicle, on the roof of which my own was the only 
remaining luggage, proceeded onwards to the Eank. Onward at 
its side, with bare feet padding the dusty road, now at the rate 
of nearly eight miles an hour, came a flaxen-headed, country 
lad of fourteen, now and then scanning my face with eager 
glances, and pulling an obeisance at his straggling locks as 
they fluttered in the wind. "When at length we stopped at 
the Eank, the little fellow had to fight for the possession of 
the portmanteau, which he did with a vigour almost amount- 
ing to desperation, with a half- drunken porter of forty, who 
was standing on the look-out. Finding himself likely to be 



132 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

meanwhile to all who may come. This is an imprudence, 
however, of which he is seldom guilty, because it is one which 
brings its immediate penalty. 

The reader who would like to catch a glimpse of this active 
subject must look for him in some one of the thoroughfares of 
commerce, just at the point which marks the limits of the 
corporation domains. If he have a map of London in which 
the city proper is marked by a different colour, he will see at 
a glance all the inlets and outlets which have to be guarded 
and taxed by the toll-man. Thus there is one at Holborn-hill, 
whose occupation can be no sinecure, seeing that he has to do 
the duty of three imaginary five-barred gates, placed, one at 
Shoe-lane, one at Farringdon- street, and one at Snow- hill. 
There is another pluralist, who stands at the west-end of Fleet- 
street, keeping one eye constantly on Temple -bar and another 
on Chancery-lane. They are all authorised and enjoined to 
collect twopence from the drivers of all vehicles, not belonging 
to freemen of London, bringing goods into the city. The 
principal city toll- man is, or was, a speculating Jew, who 
rents the whole of the tolls from the corporation. He sup- 
plies his assistants with tickets, which, like turnpike tickets 
elsewhere, are delivered to the drivers who pay the toll. 
Whether he pays his inferiors by stated salaries, or sells them 
the tickets at a discount, we are not in a condition to certify ; 
but judging from the indefatigable efforts of some of them in 
the prosecution of their profession — seeing how recklessly 
they dash into the torrent of rushing vehicles, heedless of 
horses' hoofs and rattling wheels, after a driver who turns a 
deaf ear to their challenge — we are inclined to suspect that 
they have in some way or other a personal interest in the cap- 
ture of every identical twopence. Be this as it may, the 
toll-man evidently reaps no great emolument from his pro- 
fession, which is far more wearisome and laborious than it is 
profitable. Upon his first appointment, he is generally seen 
gaping about him in a state of anxious bewilderment, half 



THE CITY TOLL-MAX. 133 

uncertain upon whom to levy his unwelcome tax. Ey the 
time that he has got the freemen's carts by heart, and learned 
to distinguish his lawful victims, he has usually made the 
discovery that his vocation is intolerably exacting, and not to 
be endured. We never knew one of them stand the ordeal 
many years. A man who would get through such a function 
well is generally deserving of something better ; and anything 
is better than a perpetual tramp out-of-doors in all weathers 
after flying twopences, in which he has but the merest frac- 
tional interest, if he have any at all. So it comes to pass 
that he looks out for repose in some other calling ; and, 
mounted on the step of an omnibus as a conductor, or stuck 
into a cabin reared in the mud of the Thames as pay-taker 
for a penny steamer, he congratulates himself that he no longer 
runs himself out of breath after the corporation coppers. 

It is not easy to come at the origin of these city tolls. There 
is, however, a charter granted to the mayor and citizens of 
London by Henry IV., which throws some light upon the 
subject. This charter was bestowed in return for the loyal 
assistance they rendered to the king in the matter of the con- 
spiracy and rebellion in which his throne and life were 
attempted, in the first year of his reign, by the Abbot of 
"Westminster, the Dukes of Albemarle, Surrey, and Exeter, 
the Earls of Gloucester and Salisbury, the Eishop of Carlisle, 
and Sir Thomas Elount. The conspiracy was discovered by 
accident, and the rebellion in which it prematurely exploded 
was quelled by the promptitude of the mayor of London, 
who supplied Henry with six thousand citizens completely 
armed. These were soon increased, by volunteers from the 
neighbourhood, to the number of twenty thousand. The rebel 
army was overthrown, and their leaders soon after taken and 
executed. The charter, which bears date the 25th May, 
1399, confers, among other privileges, upon "the said citi- 
zens, their heirs and successors, the custody as well of the 
gates of Newgate and Ludgate as all other the gates and pos- 



134 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

terns of the same city." The charter, however, does not 
make mention of the sums to be levied as tolls at the said 
gates and posterns ; and it would be absurd to suppose that 
there is any prescriptive right so ancient as the charter for 
subjecting each vehicle to the charge of twopence — a sum 
which in those days would have purchased a joint of meat. 

That those tolls have been often the pretence for fraudulent 
exactions we may gather from the following record, pre- 
served in the city memorials : — In the year 1743, one An- 
thony Wright brought an action against the lessee of one 
of the gates, who by his plea insisted on a prescriptive right 
to receive twopence for the passage of each cart laden with 
goods and merchandise amounting to the weight of one ton 
and upwards. It appeared, however, by the evidence, that 
the usage had been to take a penny only for a cart with two 
horses, however heavily laden ; and a verdict was given for 
the plaintiff against the lessee. 

We conceive the time is not far distant when the good 
sense of the corporation of London will lead to the final abo- 
lition of the city tolls, which, besides being a nuisance, must 
operate in some degree against the interests of commerce, 
which it is to their especial advantage to promote. 



135 



"AN HONEST PENNY." 



It is interesting to remark the various shifts and contrivances, 
the resorts of a very humble species of ingenuity, to which 
some of the right-minded poor by whom we are surrounded 
have recourse, in order to procure what they proudly and inde- 
pendently term " an honest penny.' ' It is gratifying to know 
that there is a very large section of the lowest ranks to whom 
the feeling of dependence upon others and the practices of dis- 
honesty are equally hateful and repugnant ; and it is impos- 
sible not to sympathise with the persevering endeavours of 
many of this class whom society seems, from some accident or 
other, to have pushed aside from the beaten paths of labour 
and its deserved emoluments ; and who are left to make their 
way in the world in the strict and literal sense of the term — 
seeing that they have first to invent a calling before they can 
pursue it. How much physical energy and good moral deter- 
mination some of them bring to bear upon this praiseworthy 
undertaking, the following brief sketches, drawn from the life, 
may assist in showing. 

THE 1EISH MACHINE. 

Terence O'Donough is an Irishman whom a fortunate fate 
has united to an English wife. When I first knew Terry he 
was in the enviable position of a hanger-on at the underground 



136 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

warehouse of a small printing-office, where two or three minor 
monthly publications were rolled off from a machine in a 
cellar, the motive-power of which was supplied by a steam- 
engine in an adjoining factory. Terry's whole fortune con- 
sisted in his wife, who plied as a basket -woman in Covent 
Garden, and his own broad back, which he carried steadily 
under the pressure of three hundred weight ; to which might 
be added a temper insensible to provocation, and an a2)petite 
which, owing to " his riverence, Father Matthew/' who had 
cured him of whisky- drinking, was a match for anything eat- 
able under the sun. Terry's wife, whom he always addressed 
as "me darlint," was in every respect the "dacent oonian" he 
was fond of calling her ; and she was not a little proud of her 
Herculean spouse, as anybody might see who observed her 
watching him as he devoured the monstrous boiling of pota- 
toes which she brought him regularly at one o'clock, and which, 
with a draught of water from the pump in the court-yard, 
constituted his unvarying dinner. I question if the good 
woman herself lived upon anything better : it was Terry's 
boast that he had made her, like himself, a "taytctalman 
intirely," and that "iver since, wi' the biessin' of iven, they 
hadn't wanted for nothin' at all at all." Terry had no regular 
engagement; his earnings were limited to fetchings and carry- 
ings, and running of errands; and when he had nothing to do 
he had nothing to receive. His average receipts were rather 
under than over a pound a month ; and his wife, according to 
his own account, which I believe was the true one, earned 
about half as much ; but she made his home comfortable to 
him, kept his little garret as " clane as the blue sky ;" and if 
Terry had any wish in the world, you may be sure the image 
of his wife was shut up in the centre of it. 

And, to tell the truth, Terry had his wishes; and they 
were, like those of all honest hard workers — for constant em- 
ployment and a larger income. How to bring about their 
realisation was the question. An untaught Irishman, bred in 



THE IKISH MACHINE. 137 

the bogs of Connaught, without education and without a call- 
ing, what could he do to improve his condition ? There was 
no human rival whom he could supplant by superior qualifi- 
cations. Even the little "printer's devils, who gallopped up and 
down stairs, and ran about the warehouse, had all "got the 
larnin', and could rade a printed book out and out," while he 
did not know " sorrow a letther." " 'Tisn't the larnin' will 
do my business anyhow," said he to himself. "Bedad, if I 
was but a stame-ingin, it's a pound a week they'd be afther 
givin' me. Arrah now ! that's what I call a diskivery. Sure 
I'll be the stame-ingin, and do it half-price, if the masther will 
ounly hear rayson !" So Terry watched his opportunity, and 
one day when the steam ran short, as it invariably did on the 
Saturday, he boldly volunteered to supersede the steam-engine, 
" if the masther would put a handle to the mill," and drive it 
clean through the week for a less sum than he paid to the 
proprietor of the steam. Terry's proposition was at first 
laughed at as absurd, as the power required was considered far 
too great for one man to supply continuously. Repeated de- 
falcations, however, on the part of Terry's rival, the steam- 
engine, at length induced the printer to listen to his offer. A 
handle was fitted to the machine, and Terry was offered half- 
a- crown a day for keeping it going. The experiment suc- 
ceeded admirably. The contest between flesh and blood, bones 
and sinews, on the one side, and cast-iron on the other, was for 
once decided in favour of the former. The snorting, fire- 
eating rival was cashiered, and sent about his proper business ; 
and from that day to this the arms of Terence O'Donough, with 
some occasional assistance from his wife, have supplied the 

motive-power to the printing-machine in Court. From 

long practice, Terry now makes comparatively light work of 
his ponderous task. During the hot summer weather his wife 
makes her appearance in the afternoon, and laying hold of the 
same handle, proves herself a worthy helpmate to her toiling 
spouse. More than once have I seen Terry fast asleep on the 



138 CURIOSITIES OE LONDON LIEE. 

floor, after working half the night, while his wife, grinding 
away, kept the concern going at the accustomed pace. The 
steam-proprietor is the only loser by the bargain; Terry's 
employer saves 20 per cent, by the exchange ; Terry himself 
has trebled his earnings ; and both he and his wife are con- 
fidently looking forward to the accumulation of sufncient 
capital for a start in the " general line," including " murphies 
and black-diamonds," which is to lead them onwards and up- 
wards to respectability and fortune. 

BURNING POETEES. 

Returning lately from a visit to the Principality, I arrived 
by the Great Western Eailway at the Padclington terminus. 
Throwing my portmanteau on the top of an omnibus bound for 
the Bank, I mounted myself by the side of it, and in a few 
minutes we were en route for the city. "We had not yet 
entered upon the New Road ere I became aware that the 
omnibus, which was crowned with luggage, was accompanied 
on its journey by no less than six young lads, the eldest not 
above seventeen, who, running at the side or in the rear of the 
vehicle, kept up with it the whole way. I noticed that if one 
of them caught my eye, he made a motion of touching his hat 
— though not a semblance of a hat or of a shoe either was to 
be found among the whole party — and executed a kind of 
shambling bow, which, being performed at the speed of six or 
seven miles an hour, appeared a rather comic species of polite- 
ness. I asked the driver the meaning of this curious cortege. 
" Them poor young 'uns, sir," said he, "isarnin' what I calls 
a reg'lar hard penny. They are a-lookin' out arter the lug- 
gage ; and because they runs it down all the way from the 
railway, they thinks they got a right to the porterage. When 
we drops a passenger and a portmanteau together you'll see 
the move. The fust man (they goes in reg'lar turns) will 
shoulder the luggage, and pocket the browns for carrin' of it 



BUSTiTOrG PORTERS. 1 9 

home. He as has the last turn will have to run perhaps all 
the way to the Bank — a good four mile the way we go. They 
gits what they can, and takes their chance whatever it is. 
Sometimes they're done altogether. A hoy may toiler the 'bus 
all the way on the hunt arter a gentleman's luggage, and never 
git it at last — ' cause why, d'ye see, a cab may take it out of 
his mouth, or a kind-hearted swell may think that a chap as 
will run four miles arter a trunk, is perhaps likely to bolt with 
it when he's got it. 'Tis all a chance. I wish 'em better 
luck, that's all." "A hard penny indeed," thought I ; " and 
a proof that these poor, ragged vagabonds are willing at any 
rate to get one honestly, if they can." 

The first passenger with luggage got out at Tottenham 
Court Road ; his baggage was hauled from the roof and lifted 
upon the shoulders of one of our running attendants by the 
conductor, who seemed to look upon the ceremony as a matter 
of course. Away marched the little bare-legged Atlas at the 
heels of the passenger towards the Hampstead Eoad, and the 
omnibus proceeded on its route accompanied by the remaining 
five. The next stoppage was at Euston Square ; and the 
porterage, being only from the omnibus to the North- Western 
Railway station, was but a twopenny job. At King's Cross 
we discharged another passenger, and lost another ragged 
attendant. At the Angel, Islington, two more disappeared ; 
and the vehicle, on the roof of which my own was the only 
remaining luggage, proceeded onwards to the Bank. Onward at 
its side, with bare feet padding the dusty road, now at the rate 
of nearly eight miles an hour, came a flaxen-headed, country 
lad of fourteen, now and then scanning my face with eager 
glances, and pulling an obeisance at his straggling locks as 
they fluttered in the wind. "When at length we stopped at 
the Bank, the little fellow had to fight for the possession of 
the portmanteau, which he did with a vigour almost amount- 
ing to desperation, with a half- drunken porter of forty, who 
was standing on the look-out. Finding himself likely to be 



140 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

worsted in trie contest, he appealed to rne with a. look which a 
flint could not have resisted, and I felt myself compelled to inter- 
fere to procure him the joh. He volunteered to carry the ohject 
of contention to Paternoster Row for 4d., after having run at least 
four miles in a "broiling sun to make sure of the commission. He 
kept close to my side, as though fearful of incurring suspicion, 
either by going too fast or by lagging behind, and civilly bore 
the burden upstairs to the second landing before holding out 
his hand for payment. In answer to my questions, he told me 
that he should immediately start back again by the shortest 
cut to Paddington, there being no chance of a job by the 
return journey. He said he could get back in forty-five 
minutes in a direct line without much running, and that they 
could do three journeys a day. A good day was worth Is. 3d. 
or Is. 4d., a bad one 8d. or 9d. He thought he made about os. 
a week out of it, but it was very hard work, and his victuals 
cost him all he got, except 6d. for lodging. He added that it 
would never do to run in shoes or boots — the gains would all 
go in leather : " the sole of a shoe wears out in no time when 
a boy's a runnin' all day long, while the sole of a fellar's foot 
only gits the thicker for it." His time was too fully occupied 
to allow of much questioning ; and having received his coin, 
he was off westward like a shot, to rejoin his comrades at the 
railway terminus. 

These poor fellows work in bands, and find their security 
in sticking closely to each other. It is only when one is left 
alone at the end of a journey that a stationary porter has a 
chance against them. Together they would infallibly chase 
away any interloper who should presume to attempt to bag 
the game which they had conjointly hunted down. There is 
no doubt that they rely a great deal, as they have reason to 
do, upon the sympathy of the passengers, some of whom find 
no small amusement in the race so pertinaciously maintained 
for the chance of a trifling reward. I am not sorry to observe 
that since the increase of employment for all classes which has 



THE DONKEY COMMISSARIAT. 141 

arisen from our growing commercial prosperity, their numbers 
have been materially thinned. They have been in some sort 
replaced b} r numerous gangs of country-bred urchins, who 
make a trade of following the suburban omnibuses, and 
tumbling heels-over-head, or " wheeling" for a hundred yards 
together on outstretched hands and feet, after the manner of 
the gipsy broods, who, in times gone by, swarmed in the track 
of the old stage-coaches, cutting capers for the halfpence of 
the outsiders — an occupation that will most assuredly cease 
to be remunerative when its novelty to the Londoner has 
died away. 

TnE DONKEY COMMISSARIAT. 

Bob Rudgc is the son of a " navvie " employed on the 
Great Northern Railway. His father's fifteen shillings a week 
has been made to undergo a very considerable stretching in 
order to make it sufficient for the wants of eight young 
children, of whom Bob is the eldest, and he not yet sixteen. 
The mother has too much to do with her little troop of half- 
naked rebels to make any further attempt at industry than is 
manifested to the passers-by in the appearance of a small 
ginger-bread and apple stall in front of the blackened brick 
cottage in Maiden Lane. If the poor woman manages by her 
desultory traffic to pay the rent of the little domicile, she 
thinks herself well off. The number of undeniably good ap- 
petites beneath Mr. Rudgc's small roof has been long a source 
of perplexity to the honest man, and all of them would cer- 
tainly have been reduced to occasional very short commons if 
Rob had not, like a dutiful son, come to the rescue. Maiden 
Lane and its adjoining purlieus and precincts, it should be 
known, are the El Dorado, the unbought paradise, of hungry 
donkeys. There and thereabouts are numberless small patches 
of unenclosed grass, half lumbered with bricks and building 
materials, and destined to be built upon at no very distant 



142 cttbiosities op loxdon life. 

date. These are plentifully pastured by asses too poorly 
ownered to boast of private lodgings, who browse patiently 
among the broken bricks and rubbish, and pick up a gratuitous 
livelihood, being turned out of the shafts and left to shift 
for themselves whenever relieved from duty. Man is ever the 
child of circumstances, and generally derives his knowledge, 
if indeed he gets any worth having, from his personal sur- 
roundings. Little Bob Rudge, like the rest of us, caught up 
his experience from the lessons of his daily life. He was 
nurtured and bred among donkeys, and from the long habit 
of observing their predilections and propensities, has at last 
struck out a business for himself, enabling him to relieve his 
parents of the burden of his maintenance, and further, to 
render valuable co-operation towards that of the family. 

All round the suburbs of London, girding the metropolis in 
every direction, are miles upon miles of open sewers and 
drains. The pedestrian who diverges from the beaten track is 
often only prevented from walking into them by the kindly 
information of his olfactory nerves : they are carried by nu- 
merous culverts under the New River in the north, and under 
the roads and railways in the east and south ; the aristocratic 
nostrils of the west have voted them a nuisance, and there 
they abound in less profusion ; but everywhere their odours 
ascend and flavour the country air which the retired citizen 
imagines he is inhaling in all its purity. But the poison of 
one man is the meat of another, and this interminable source 
of disease and death little Bob Rudge has made the foundation 
of his traffic. The banks of these endless ditches and drains 
are everywhere covered with a rank and luxurious vegetation, 
chiefly consisting of a gigantic species of succulent grass rising 
on long reedy stems, which is to a donkey what turtle- soup 
is to an alderman. This Master Bob collects and sells by the 
sackful to the owners of asses ; not to the poverty-stricken 
proprietors of the squatting herds in his own immediate 
neighbourhood, but to the thriving owners of the lively brutes 



THE DONKEY COIOIISSIAEIAT. 143 

who on Hampstead Heath, and other such places of fashion- 
able resort, amble flauntingly in milk-white drapery beneath 
the soft side-saddles of the frolic fair, or plod quietly along, 
guided by the feeble hand of the consumptive invalid. 

Bob's profession is anything but a sinecure. He began by 
being his own beast of burden. I met him two years ago, 
armed with a short sickle and a sack six feet long; he was 
levelling the herbage on the bank of a ditch, and ramming it 
into his bag. Not being at all in the secret, I questioned him 
as to the use of his crop. 

"What is it for?'' said he: "why, for the mokes to be 
sure. Don't they like it — jest !" 

" You don't pretend that they prefer it to grass or hay ?" 
" Don't they though ? They perfers it to any think. If you 
got a moke, you jest try him : if you lives handy here, I'll be 
proud to sarve yer. Bless your 'art, about three bags on it 
turns 'em out as sleek as a mole. Yy, look 'ere ; it's pretty nigh 
all juice — aint it ?" "With that he squeezed a handful of the 
reedy grass till his fingers were dripping with moisture. 
" The mokes is no fools, whatever you think on 'em : they 
likes gravy in their meat as well as Christians. He, he ! You 
don't catch 'em leavin' on it till 'tis all gone, I can tell yer. 
I could sell ten times as much as I do if I could git it, only 
'tis so fur to take it. This 'ere 's a-goin' to Camden Town, 
more nor two mile. If I had a moke o' my own I'd do well." 
By this time he had reaped a dozen yards of the bank, and 
cut enough to fill his bag. He rammed it in with his head 
and shoulders as the sack lay upon the ground, until it was 
tight enough to stand upright. ■ Raising it on end till it 
towered far above his head, he stooped, and buckling it round 
his waist by straps stitched to the sacking, walked off with 
bended back, the ponderous load projecting forwards over his 
head, like the coffin of Daniel Lambert on the back of a 
Lilliputian undertaker. 

Bob has now grown quite the little man of business. His 



144 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

ambition is gratified, for he has two " mokes" of his own, 
and is doing a smart trade as commissariat to a pretty nu- 
merous regiment of donkeys, if one may judge by the palpable 
improvement in his costume and the expression of his con- 
fident face. He reaps and sells his crops without paying rent, 
taxes, or tithe. The paternal cottage has been lately painted 
and whitewashed ; little Dick has made his first appearance 
in a shirt ; and a neat-boarded shed, well pitched with tar, and 
weather-proof, in the rear of the dwelling, gives token at once 
of Bob's prosperity and his humane care for the comforts of his 
friends and benefactors the mokes, who have he'ped in bringing 
it about. How he employs his time and his donkey-power in 
winter is a secret which, not being in his confidence, I have 
not been able to fathom. I have no doubt that he has found 
a market for both, and turns them to good account. I encoun- 
tered him only a few days ago in a field not far from the 
Seven Sisters' Road. He was accompanied by young Dick ; 
both were busy u reaping where they had not sown;" and 
their allies, the mokes, tethered to a hurdle in an adjoining 
lane, stood witnessing the operation through a gap in the 
hedge with characteristic satisfaction. 

FEMALE INDEPENDENCE. 

Nancy Goodall was the only daughter of poor parents. Her 
father was a day-labourer upon a farm at which when a boy 
it was my wont to pay an annual visit at harvest-time. She 
was a sprightly and active young woman when, while yet a 
child, I first saw her. Born to servitude, she graced her lot 
with those quiet virtues which render servitude respectable 
and often endearing. In her twenty-first year she accom- 
panied the squire's family to London in the humble capacity 
of housemaid. There she remained for nearly thirty years, 
rising gradually through the various grades of service, until, 
finally installed as housekeeper, she had the sole management 



FEMALE INDEPENDENCE. 145 

of domestic affairs. She might, perhaps ought to have saved 
during this long period a considerable sum of money. She 
really saved nothing. The sole use of money, in her estima- 
tion, was to ameliorate the condition of those dear to her. 
Her parents, who, as they grew old and infirm, needed assist- 
ance, received the best part of her earnings, and by her 
bounty were saved from having recourse to the hateful charity 
of the parish. After their death her only ' brother, who had 
married young and imprudently, emigrated with a large 
family to America. It was Nancy's money and Nancy's 
credit that procured his outfit and paid his passage ; and 
several years passed after his departure before she had dis- 
charged the responsibilities undertaken in behalf of him and 
his wife and children. Still no thought of care or anxiety 
for herself ever troubled her. She knew her old master too 
well to imagine for a moment that he would ever allow her 
to be in want. Since the death of her mistress she had been 
the friend rather than the servant of the young ladies, and 
after they were married and settled in the north, had been 
the careful nurse of the old squire, who, before he died, added 
a codicil to his will, which secured her, as he thought, a com- 
fortable provision for life. 

When the lifeless body of the old man was borne off to the 
family vault in Devonshire, Nancy felt herself completely 
alone in the world. She remained a few weeks in the house 
in Piccadilly, awaiting the settlement of affairs, and expecting 
the purchase of the annuity which she well knew had been 
bequeathed by her master. The crudest misfortune overtook 
her at once. Owing to certain family quarrels, and some real 
or fancied neglect on the part of his heirs, which the deceased 
squire had violently resented in the disposition of his property, 
the will he had made was disputed on the ground of alleged 
insanity on the part of the testator ; and after a great deal of 
strife and some litigation, the estate was thrown into Chan- 
cery. Neither of the litigants had the slightest objection to 



146 CURIOSITIES OP LOXDOX LIFE. 

[Nancy's legacy, which each and all pronounced well deserved, 
and pledged themselves to pay : but no one paid it, and the 
desolate woman, now past the prime of life, was thrown, 
after a comparatively easy and luxurious existence, upon her 
own resources. The town-house was shut up, and Nancy, 
with •one quarter's wages in her pocket, was turned loose on 
the desert of London to seek for the means of subsistence. 
As if it were decreed that nothing should be wanting to com- 
plete her distress,* she was knocked down and run over by a 
coach while wandering about in search of a lodging ; and 
emerged from the hospital — to which she was carried in a 
state of insensibility — three months after, a cripple for life, 
to begin the world again at fifty years of age upon a pair of 
crutches. 

Nine-tenths of the women in existence so situated would 
have given up the contest, and retired to die in the work- 
house. Nancy was made of harder stuff. In a dingy house 
in a by-street in Somers-town she took a humble lodging, and, 
determined to support herself, cast about for the means of 
doing it. The pride that kept her from asking alms of any 
one strengthened her resolution to do without alms. Hardly 
possessed of the power of locomotion, she still managed to 
creep about in search of employment. Needlework was out 
of the question — her way of life not having sufficiently 
skilled her in the art, and it being too late to learn ; her sight^ 
moreover, beginning to fail. So she boldly entered the lists 
of handicraft labour : paid a journeyman clogmaker for instruc- 
tion in his craft, bought the necessary tools, and set about 
making clogs for the market. In muddy London there is an 
immense demand for these useful manufactures ; and Nancy, 
with a woman's tact for an article of woman's wear, contrived 
to make her productions favourites with her sex. It was 
little indeed, but a few pence, that she got out of each pair ; 
but she became expert from practice, and therefore never 
wanted employment. For seven years she pursued her 



FEMALE INDEPENDENCE. 147 

laborious trade, and supplied a large district of dealers with, 
her stock. She faced the rigid economy and penurious fare 
to which she found herself suddenly reduced, after a life of 
plentiful abundance, with a courage and patient endurance 
that never flagged. Her one room was half- filled with narrow 
planks of wood, from which she sawed with her own hands 
the soles of the clogs, afterwards carving them to shape, and 
hollowing them for the reception of the foot. This was the 
labour of the morning, generally commencing with the dawn ; 
the latter part of the day she spent seated at a little bench, 
cutting out and affixing the leathern ears, and finishing off 
the goods for the shopkeeper. She lived constantly sur- 
rounded with chips and cuttings, and used to boast that she 
smelt like a carpenter's shop. But the exercise preserved and 
even improved her health, and the little excitement of traffic 
gave a purpose and a pleasure to her toilsome life which she 
had never felt before. 

JSTancy is yet alive. Contrary to almost all precedent in 
Chancery cases, that one in which she was so deeply inter- 
ested has been lately settled. Her master's will has been 
executed to the letter, and JSTancy is now in receipt of an 
annuity considerably greater than the sum bequeathed for the 
purchase would have bought when she was eight years 
younger. She has retired to her native village — not to 
indulge in the pride of ease and sloth, but to set an example 
of usefulness and benevolence. She has voluntarily under- 
taken a task for which few are better qualified — that of 
educating practically young girls for service, two of whom 
she has constantly under tuition. If this short history of 
her life should meet her eye, which is not improbable, she 
may perhaps suspect who was the writer ; but the very last 
thing she would think of would be the idea of taking offence 
at the narrative. 



n2 



148 



CUEIOSITIES OF KOGUEKY. 



Although in the conduct of business there cannot be said to 
exist any debateable ground between honesty and dishonesty, 
inasmuch as the golden precept which commands us to do 
unto others as we would that they should do unto us, is ever 
at hand, and ever suggestive of the right rule of action, yet 
there is a wide field of operation for those who, rejecting the 
authority of this precept,, and preferring the care and culture 
of dumber One to all other considerations whatever, choose to 
live rather by their wits than their work. In London, and in 
all great towns, there are a thousand means of turning a penny, 
and a pound too, by practices and pursuits which, though op- 
posed to the spirit of the law, are found in fact to be rarely 
punishable by it. It is hardly to be wondered at, when we 
take into consideration the infinite varieties of human character, 
that wherever men are congregated in great numbers, a certain 
portion of them should be found, whose pleasure and delight 
it is to beard, to violate, and to elude the penal statutes. 
Rogues of this sort abound in the metropolis, and no incon- 
siderable amount of skill and cunning are displayed in the 
pursuit of their vocation. It is a question whether with some 
of them profit alone, unconnected with peculation, would 
have any charms ; their industry demands the spice and flavour 
of rascality to stimulate it into action : they have no whole- 
some appetite for an honest penny, and would starve and die 



THE FREE FORESTER. 149 

out but for the excitement of roguery. The following outlines 
cursorily sketched from the life, may serve to introduce to the 
notice of the reader a few of the worthies who manage to enjoy 
the patronage of the public for services more than doubtful, 
and who, keeping for the most part out of the grasp of the 
law, do yet gain a living by its infraction. 

THE FREE FORESTER. 

This is a designation probably unknown to the majority of 
readers as applicable to the denizen of a crowded city : it is 
assumed, however, with no small degree of pride, by the mem- 
bers of a certain class well known to each other, and who are 
to be found sparsely scattered through the streets of London 
at all seasons of the year, with the exception of the fading 
autumn and during the rigour of winter. The free forester 
owes his title and his occupation to that inextinguishable love 
of nature which prevails more or less in all great towns and 
cities, united with his own independence of the claims of 
meum and tuum, and with the right which he has established, 
to his own satisfaction at least, to certain waifs and strays of 
the vegetable kingdom, or rather to certain vegetable property 
which he chooses to consider his lawful prey. He is a trader 
without capital ; a seller who neither produces nor purchases ; 
a gardener and arboriculturist without an inch of ground; 
a dealer in game and poultry too at times, having no license 
either to shoot or to sell the savoury wares, for the possession 
of which he would be puzzled to account. 

With the very earliest breath of spring, the free forester, 
quitting his winter avocation, whatever it may be, appears in 
the streets of London, on the edge of some wide pavement, or 
between the shafts of a hand-cart, in charge of a goodly stock 
of the first budding promises of the opening year. Imitating 
the perambulating gardeners, he sets up the cry of " All 
a-growing and a-blowing!" — and among a population noto- 



150 CT73I0SITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

riously fond of flowers, who, if they can have a garden nowhere 
else, will establish one upon their window-sills, he soon 
succeeds in disposing of his roots. These consist of snowdrops, 
primroses, polyanthuses, violets, oxlips, slips of geranium, 
hen- and- chicken daisies, and other early blooming flowers, or 
sweet-smelling herbs. As the spring advances, and warms 
into summer, you see him still pursuing his rounds, or standing 
at his accustomed corner, well supplied with the blossoming 
flora of the season; tulips, hyacinths, roses — red, white, or 
mossy — fuchsias, rhododendrons, young variegated laurel, 
fir and box-trees in pots, bushes of rue and London-pride, 
balsams, geraniums, ranunculuses — everything, in short, that 
will grow out of the hothouse, and which garden-loving 
citizens are fond of cultivating in front or rear of their suburban 
dwellings. As summer wanes, and autumn steps quietly on 
the scene, the activity of the free forester would seem somewhat 
to abate : his cry is not so frequently heard ; his stand at the 
corner of the street has altogether disappeared ; and though he 
is here and there seen pushing through the crowd his hand- 
cart, still gay with the rich hues of autumnal blossoms, he 
yet drives but a laggard trade, and that only by dint of the 
lowest possible prices, which, however, he can well afford to 
take for wares which have cost him nothing, or next to 
nothing. Long before the chrysanthemum has bared her starry 
face to welcome the waning year, the free forester has vanished, 
like the last rose of summer, to return no more till the dawn 
of a new spring recals him to the scene of his labours. 

But the reader naturally inquires, How does the fellow 
come by his merchandise ? We are not in a condition to give 
a perfectly satisfactory reply to this question. Thus much, 
however, we know : he is seen to start from the neighbour- 
hood of St. Giles's, not far from what yet remains of the old 
Rookery, late in the afternoon, or in the early twilight 
of a spring or summer's evening, sometimes driving be- 
fore him an empty hand-cart, at others carrying over his 



THE EK.EE EOEESTEE. 151 

shoulders a large canvas sack of four or five bushel capa- 
city. Directing his course towards the suburbs, doubtless 
in pursuance of a plan previously designed, he is beyond 
the limits of London ere night closes in ; and, marvellous 
to say, long before the drowsy citizen has begun to dream of 
breakfast, he is back again to his expectant partner, at the 
point from whence he started. Consigning the produce of his 
night's industry to his chum, he turns into bed for an hour or 
two, while the other prepares the goods consigned to him for 
the inspection of the public. In this business no time is lost. 
"We once witnessed, with perfect amazement, this apparently 
miraculous process, the operator dreaming of nothing so little 
as that his actions were under review. In the case referred 
to the wares were contained in a large bag, about two feet in 
diameter, and four or five in length, and must have weighed 
considerably above a hundredweight. The dresser — for so he 
may be appropriately called — turned them all out carefully 
upon the ground in the square back-yard of a twopenny 
lodging-house : this he did not by emptying the bag at its 
mouth, but by unbuttoning it at the sides, and laying open 
its contents. These consisted of flower-roots in full bloom 
for the most part, but crushed, heaped, and tumbled together 
in such a squashed condition, as to appear fit for nothing but 
the manure heap. But he very soon changed the aspect of 
the stock into a goodly show, of which a Covent-garden 
cultivator would not have been ashamed. Selecting the 
finest flowers from the mass, with a pair of short shears he 
cut away the bruised or broken leaves, and rinsing the plant 
in a small stream from a stopcock, set it firmly in a pot 
already prepared with mould, in far less time than it takes to 
describe the deed. Producing the mould-filled pots from an 
outhouse as fast as they were required, he soon had some 
dozens of fine blooming flowers in a condition for sale. Around 
the roots of each, as he set it aside as finished, he poured 



152 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

carefully, using a small ladle for the purpose, a few drops of a 
dirty-looking liquid from an earthenware pan which stood in 
a corner : this no doubt was some powerful vegetable stimu- 
lant, under the influence of which the excited plants would, 
for one day at least (long enough for his purpose), assume the 
appearance of extraordinary healthiness and vigour. In fact, 
when, in less than two hours afterwards, the whole stock, 
ranged on a couple of broad hand- carts, sallied out of the lane 
on its way to the fashionable thoroughfares of the West End, 
the show of tender balsams with their delicate blossoms, and 
gorgeous geraniums glittering in fiery redness, looked so 
beautiful and so healthy, such a credit to the skill of the florist, 
that we felt it would be madness to attempt to convince any 
one not an eye-witness like ourselves of what had been their 
actual condition three hours back. That portion of the stock 
not intended for potting was more summarily dealt with. It 
consisted of roots adapted for front gardens, chiefly of common 
flowers and sweet- smelling herbs, which, having suffered little 
from the rough usage and confinement to which they had 
been subjected, were merely sprinkled with a little water, and 
then ranged round the edges of the carts, forming a kind of 
inclosure for those in pots. 

If the reader is not yet enlightened as to the manner in 
which the free forester comes by his merchandise, let him live 
in the suburbs of London, and try the experiment, as we have 
for the last seven years, of cultivating a garden in front of his 
parlour window. Let him note, moreover, what becomes of 
the contents of a garden, front or back, of a suburban house 
during the interval between the departure of one tenant and 
the arrival of another. AVe are loth to cast a slur upon the 
character of any class, more especially of one that is so emi- 
nently industrious, that lives not only laborious days, but 
laborious nights as well, — one, too, that loves flowers and green 
fields, both a passion with ourselves ; but the truth must out 



THE FKEE FOUESTER. 153 

for all that, and the plain unvarnished truth is, as Dr. John- 
son would have phrased it, " The fellow's a thief, and there's 
an end on't." 

But, as we have already hinted, this worthy does not con- 
fine his attention exclusively to "botanical experiments ; there 
is a department of natural history in which he has consider- 
able interest, and by the cultivation of which he adds not a 
little to his annual income. Those Michaelmas martyrs, the 
geese, find their way somehow or other into his bag or his 
basket, and during the last week of September he drives a 
brisk trade with liberal-minded customers, whom he knows 
well where to meet with, and who, " asking no questions for 
conscience' sake," are content to buy a fat goose at a lean 
price, without troubling themselves to inquire under what 
circumstances the plump victim left the farmer's yard. His 
customers for poultry and game, it may be remarked by the 
way, are chiefly the well- employed workmen and operatives 
of the metropolis. In large establishments, where scores or 
hundreds of men are congregated for industrial purposes, he 
makes his appearance, after regular intervals, during the 
whole game season, generally coming an hour or two before 
pay-time, well laden with dainties doomed to smoke on the 
Sunday dinner -table of the artisan. The men banter him 
upon the cheapness of his wares ; but his brazen self-posses- 
sion is never put to the blush. He offers a couple of fowls or 
a hare at fifty per cent, below the selling-price in the cheapest 
market in London, observing, by way of recommending the 
bargain, " I suppose you thinks I stole 'em, but I'm blow'd if 
you arn't wrong this here once. Them fowls was sent to me 
by my old gran' mother in the country, to keep my birthday 
with; but you see the old lady didn't send no sarce nor 
sassingers, and as I can't afford to buy trimmins, and it goes 
agin my conscience to eat 'em without, I hoffers 'em to you 
at two-and-twopence." " Why, how often does your birthday 
come round ? " asks the workman. " That hare I bought of 

H 3 



154 CTTEICSITIES OF LOKDON LIFE. 

you a fortnight ago was given to you by a friend as a birth- 
day present !" "As often as I wants it of course/' replies 
the chapman; "that's a privilege I've got, if I harn't got 
ne'er another. Come, take 'em at two bob : I can't be 
bothering all day with them birds." As may be readily ima- 
gined, at such prices his merchandise does not remain long on 
hand : goose, chicken, hare, or turkey soon find new proprie- 
tors, and the free forester, shouldering his basket, disappears 
without loss of tine. 

Occasionally he will make his appearance in the workshop 
in the middle of the week, bringing a couple of fresh hares or 
rabbits, or a basket of live fowls; "because," says he, "if 
you don't want to eat your Sunday's dinner on a Wednesday 
or Thursday, them pussies '11 keep for a week, and the birds 
is fresh enough, I 'spose, if you kills 'em when you wants 'em. 
A shillin' a piece — ax no more, and take no less. Didn't 
smug 'em nether; if I had, they'd a been eighteenpence. 
Got a man to steal 'em for me, a friend o' mine, as wants to 
be off to Botany arter his wife, as was sent over by mistake. 
I gived him the job cos it went to my heart, it did, to see him 
a grievin' an' a takin' on so. Come, who's for the live birds, 
and who's for the cats? Don't all speak at once, cos I hates 
confusion and bother. There, if that arn't enough for the 
money, I'll give you the next for no thin' ! " One would 
think, by the light-hearted hilarity of the fellow, that his 
conscience was pretty clear of offence ; but the expression of 
his eye belies his rattling tongue, and tells of a lurking dread 
of some not improbable mischance, which he is not altogether 
unprepared to meet. We must remark that it is not always 
that the viands he offers for sale are fit for eating. He is in 
the habit occasionally of intercepting a cargo of fish or a "lot" 
of game on its way to the river, where, in the dawn of morning 
or the dead of night, certain dealers in those commodities are 
wont to consign their stale and unsaleable stock to the bosom 
of Father Thames. His impudence enables him to pass off 



THE HORSE-MAKER. 155 

such, wares with unblushing effrontery ; he knows that, how- 
ever offensive they may have been to the olfactories for this 
week past, the keenest nose will detect nothing wrong after 
he has il taken the stinlc out of them;" a process which he effec- 
tually performs, and the means of doing which he guards as a 
profound secret. If he encounter complaint on the subject of 
such bargains on again making his appearance at his accustomed 
haunt, he flies into a violent rage with the fictitious personage 
who, he swears, "sold him the lot of goods," by which he 
declares he not only lost money, but disobliged his best cus- 
tomers. His career is not generally of very long duration ; 
his constitution would seem to be colonial, with an antipodal 
tendency : he is apt to become the subject of compulsory 
emigration, and is often required to complete his botanical 
studies, and to consummate his natural history experience, 
under official surveillance in a far- distant region. Some of 
them, however, being their own "fences," and having the 
caution to keep their depredations within bounds, escape such, 
untoward accidents ; and after accumulating a sufficient fund, 
cease their perambulations, and settle down in some safer 
calling. It is rare to meet with a man of mature years 
leading the life of a free forester in London. 

THE HORSE-MAKER. 

We might fill a volume with the performances of this 
worthy, but must perforce despatch him summarily, as others 
are waiting to be limned as soon as we have moved him out 
of the way. This notable personage locates principally in the 
neighbourhood of Whitechapel, though many of his kith and 
kin are to be met with in or near the neighbourhood of Smith- 
field, and in the lowest parts of Westminster. In appearance, 
the horse-maker has nothing Cockneyish or London-like about 
him ; even his dialect, though he be a Cockney born and bred, 
is in some degree provincial both in idiom and accent. His 



156 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

costume is that of the respectable agricultural yeoman or 
small farmer; and is always in neat and tidy trim. He 
affects a rustic gentility and simplicity of behaviour, and 
disarms suspicion by his cheerful, open, loquacious, and un- 
sophisticated manner : he makes no great parade of himself in 
the markets, never attending, in fact, when his presence can 
be dispensed with. By this means his simulated character 
lasts him the longer, and he is saved from the disagreeable 
necessity of shifting the scene of his labours. His business is 
to purchase horses which, from accident, vice, disease, or even 
old age, are rendered unfit for the service of man, and then, 
by means best known to himself, to metamorphose the poor 
beasts into quiet, plausible, serviceable-looking steeds, and to 
sell them, while yet under the influence of his all-potent 
incantations, to unwary customers. There is hardly a dis- 
order horse-flesh is heir to the symptoms of which he cannot 
temporarily banish, by means of drug, knife, cautery, or some 
secret nostrum ; while there is no animal so vicious but that 
he can subdue him for a time to quiet good behaviour. By 
dint of shears, singeing, currycomb, and brush, under his 
direction the roughest hide assumes the radiant polish of the 
turf; by the cunning application of ginger or cayenne to the 
jaws, the nostrils, the ears, or elsewhere, the dullest worn-out 
hack is stimulated into sprightliness and demonstrations of 
blood and breeding ; and the poor honest brutes are compelled 
by his arts to play the hypocrite, and to assume virtues and 
qualities to which they have perhaps been strangers all their 
lives. 

The horse-maker has an intimate connection with the 
knackers' yards, to the proprietors of which he is well 
known as a customer. Not a few of his bargains in horse- 
flesh have been previously doomed to the dogs (or rather, in 
London, to the cats), and have been temporarily rescued by 
him from the knackers' knife. So well is this known, that 
respectable dealers in the metropolis, on sending a horse to be 



THE HORSE- MAKER. 157 

slaughtered, invariably charge their servants to see the animal 
slain before quitting the premises of the knacker. If this 
precautionary measure be omitted, it is more than possible 
that the owner of the beast may find himself, a few days 
after, mounted on the very brute which he had condemned to 
the knife, having bought him, re - manufactured, to supply 
the place of the supposed dead one. An instance actually 
occurred no great while ago of a farmer selling an old roadster 
for dog's-meat price at Barnet Pair, and buying him again 
two days after at Smithfield, riding home well pleased with 
his purchase, and only discovering the fraud through the un- 
accountable familiarity of what he supposed to be the stranger 
horse with his old quarters. 

A favourite speculation of these worthies, and one that 
generally pays a swinging per-centage, is by clubbing to- 
gether to purchase at a country fair a lot of wild colts fresh 
from the hills, and, by dint of doctoring and dressing, to pre- 
pare them for exhibition and sale at the West End auction- 
marts. We have more than once witnessed the sale of these 
job-lots, which very rarely result to the satisfaction of the 
purchasers. We have seen each separate nag, just two 
minutes before he was led out to exhibit his paces in view of 
the company, subjected to certain indescribable manipulations 
and applications of stimulating nostrums, intended and calcu- 
lated to make him counterfeit the gait and action of thorough- 
breeding, or something like it; and many a hack, whose 
actual value must have been something between seven and 
ten pounds, have we seen knocked down for from twenty to 
thirty guineas, or even more, to heedless amateurs in horse- 
flesh, who, before a week was over, would have been too glad 
to part with their bargains at a loss of fifty per cent. Still, it 
is possible at times to get a bargain even from a horse maker. 
Prom the intimate practical knowledge these fellows acquire 
of all the various diseases and vicious propensities of the race 
equine, it does occasionally happen, especially when the defect 



158 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

is a vice, and not a disease, that they will effect a thorough 
cure. "We were once too well acquainted with a brute who 
possessed every quality that a horse should have, with the 
exception of docility, the want of which nullified all the rest. 
Though valued at between fifty and sixty guineas, from his fine 
proportions and strength of limb, he was sold, after a score of 
grooms had tried their skill upon him in vain, for three sove- 
reigns to a member of this fraternity, who, a fortnight after- 
wards, exhibited him in harness drawing near two tons with 
perfect ease and willingness, though he had not heretofore in 
any other hands submitted to become of any use whatever. 
His vanquisher declared that he had taken the devil out of 
him by driving him from Yauxhall to Bristol in one day, 
allowing him one day's rest, and then back again on the third 
day. Be this as it may, the horse was purchased at a high 
price for her Majesty's service, and we saw him frequently 
afterwards performing the hardest work with perfect quiet- 
ness and docility. 

This class of deceivers seldom succeed in their attempts to 
get on ; they are for the most part men who, seduced by the 
love of the saddle and whip, have deserted the occupations to 
which they were brought up, and have sought, without capi- 
tal, to participate in the profits of the regular dealer in horses. 
Not a few of them are the proprietors of ricketty cabs or 
hackney-coaches, which, like the beasts that draw them, have 
been long ago fairly worn out in the service of the public. It 
is not unusual to encounter an equipage which, including 
horse, harness, and vehicle, would be a sorry purchase at five 
pounds. The hungry proprietor, seated on the box, crawls 
about the streets in the dusk of the evening in hopes of 
picking up another, and still another, last fare : he is afraid 
to halt at the regular " stand," lest his poor staggering brute 
should be too stiff to move off in case of a sudden call. The 
scoundrel has platted an iron wire into the thin end of his 
whip-lash, well knowing that nothing short of actual torture 



THE DOG-MAKER. 159 

will goad the wretched jade he drives into anything faster 
than a walking-pace ! One is often tempted at snch a spec- 
tacle to pray for a collision with some racing van or omnibus, 
which shall shake the little remaining life out of the poor 
brute, and thus release him from the tyranny of his master, 
punishing the biped at the same moment for his dastardly 
inhumanity. 

THE DOG-MAKEK. 

Dog-making was a craft once practised in London, though 
with but limited and temporary success. The business had 
its origin in the great demand for pet dogs of certain breeds 
(principally Blenheim spaniels and small terriers, both Scotch 
and English), taken in connection with the great mortality 
which marks the first year of canine existence. If there were 
any accurate statistics on such matters, they would show us ? 
there is little doubt, that above one-third of the dogs bred for 
pets, and designed literally for the lap of fashion, die in their 
first year. The dog-dealers, not much relishing this great 
deduction from their profits, were in the habit, not many years 
ago, of fitting the skins of their deceased favourites to the 
bodies of a more hardy race. A breed of mongrels was kept 
on hand, doomed to be promoted in course of time to the cast- 
off finery of the defunct elegantes. This process was so inge- 
niously accomplished, that the fraud could be detected only by 
a very minute inspection. We have seen one of these puppy 
masqueraclers, the offspring of a bull-bitch, so cleverly indued 
with the hide of a King Charles's spaniel, as not merely to 
preclude all likelihood of suspicion, but to baffle any investi- 
gation that could be made without exciting the animal's out- 
cries. The skin was not only cut to measure, and carefully 
sewed on, but was further attached by a powerful cement — 
and it is worthy of remark that the experiment would have 
resulted in the speedy death of any animal which does not, 



160 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

like trie dog, perspire through the tongue, as the cement used 
must necessarily prevent perspiration through the skin. Such 
living manufactures were generally sold at the corners of 
streets, and got rid of, if possible, out of hand, for reasons too 
obvious to mention. Dog-making may, however, now be con- 
sidered as a branch of industiy that has become extinct. That 
spirit of improvement in the economy of manufactures which 
of late years has tended so much to cheapen production, has 
had its effect upon the dog trade as well as others, the pro- 
fessors of which have arrived at a conclusion, the soundness 
of which we have at least no logical reason to doubt — namely, 
that it is more remunerative to steal the animals in a genuine 
state, than to fabricate false ones at the cost of no small labour 
and ingenuity, which, after all, for want of a speedy sale, 
may be frequently thrown away. 

THE DOG- STEALER. 

The dog-stealer's establishment — and there are a consider- 
able number of them in different parts of the metropolis — 
is generally situated in the immediate neighbourhood of some 
mews or livery stables, end is in fact very frequently a dila- 
pidated stable, temporarily fitted up for the reception of the 
stolen animals. A servant of the proprietor is always in 
attendance on the premises, both day and night, provided 
with food, and a whip, to feed the hungry, and castigate the 
quarrelsome. He receives all animals bearing a marketable 
value which are brought by the dog-thieves, who continually 
perambulate the streets at all hours of the twenty- four in search 
of their prey — giving a check upon his employer for a certain 
specified sum, according to a scale agreed upon. These kid- 
nappers, we may observe, have no necessary connection with 
any particular establishment, but generally dispose of their 
plunder at the receptacle nearest at hand, or at that where 
the highest price can be obtained ; for in this, as well as in all 



THE DOG-STEALER. 161 

other trades, there exists a strong competition. Many of these 
ill-doers, it is pitiable to remark, are women, who meet with 
vastly more snccess in the capture of the small and expensive 
pets which abonnd in the fashionable quarters of the town 
than do the men or boys. 

"We cannot be mistaken in onr narration of the details of 
this nefarious traffic, because we have sat pursuing our voca- 
tion within twenty feet of one of these receptacles for a whole 
twelvemonth, unseen, though observing everything. During 
this period the whole economy of the trade became as palpable 
to view as it would have been had we organized it ourselves. 
At all hours of the day, but chiefly at dusk and early morning, 
the kidnappers would arrive, bringing dogs for transfer, and 
receiving a scrap of paper in exchange. Sometimes the ani- 
mals were brought openly in arms, sometimes they were led 
by a string — but more frequently were concealed about the 
person of the thief, and only produced after entering the pre- 
mises and closing the door. Pampered lap-dogs, poodles, 
terriers, and spaniels, came in pretty regular rotation to this 
den of disquiet; and occasionally pointers, setters, beagles, 
and retrievers, of considerable value, would make their ap- 
pearance. ]S"ow and then, too, some huge, unsightly, rough- 
coated, half- starved cur would arrive, whom the passing of 
the dog-cart act, then recently enacted, had probably thrown 
out of occupation, and condemned to a wandering life of per- 
petual famine : once within the portals of this inferno, his 
miseries were soon terminated, he being introduced for the 
purpose of furnishing food for his fellow-prisoners. 

A considerable per-centage of the stolen dogs find their way 
back to their owners — and indeed it is a disappointment to 
the receiver if the loss be not advertised, and a reward offered. 
"When this is not readily done, unless the dog be of a breed 
for which there is a great demand, the loser will probably hear 
of his or her favourite, and be informed that the missing pet 



162 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

will be forthcoming on the payment of a certain sum. Un- 
fortunately, however, fancy dogs, especially of what is called 
King Charles's breed, are in great request at the present time 
in Holland and Belgium, and considerable numbers are ex- 
ported periodically to supply the markets in those countries. 
The stock in this country is not so much diminished as this 
continual exportation would lead us to infer, because the 
Dutch and Eelgic dog-thieves, who are not a whit less expert 
than their Anglican brethren, industriously manage to ship 
a good proportion of them back again — so that many a be- 
wildered poodle passes half his lifetime at sea. What becomes 
of those which, being unfit for exportation, are not redeemed 
by their owners, it is not easy to say. Great numbers, with- 
out doubt, are sacrificed for the sake of their skins ; others, 
docked, clipped, and shorn (and sometimes dyed) out of all 
resemblance to their former selves, are sold to sporting gentle- 
men at country fairs and markets ; and others, as we have 
good reason to know, after enduring the miseries of imprison- 
ment and semi- starvation for weeks, or perhaps months, are 
emancipated by a disease which attacks the skin, upon the 
first appearance of which they are sent summarily about their 
business, less they should infect the whole stock in trade. 

The dog- stealer contrives most adroitly to evade the law. 
The proprietor of a dozen dog-layers is never seen even in 
company with a dog when making his rounds. The rewards 
are claimed and received by agents who well understand the 
department of the business allotted to them ; no cross-question- 
ing will ever induce them to vary from the stereotyped state- 
ment they have to make. It is said that they are allowed by 
their principal a very liberal per- centage, and that to make the 
transaction safe to him, they have to pay over the amount of 
the reward before they receive it — that is, upon the reception 
of the missing dog for restoration to the owner. Speaking 
commercially, the allowance ought to bear a thumping com- 



THE DOG -STEALER. 163 

mission for del credere, seeing that the deliverer rnns a risk of 
never getting the reward, or at least of being pnt to the in- 
convenience of swearing a false oath to obtain it. 

The ostensible profession of the dog- stealer is almost inva- 
riably that of dog-doctor, and indeed in some parts of the 
town he makes a good income by this branch of his business, 
frequently getting a golden fee in payment for a prescription 
for some aristocratic valetudinarian pug or poodle. If his 
receptacles attract the notice of the police, they are described 
as infirmaries, and the prisoners as patients ; and even if a 
lost dog be discovered in one of them, he has of course been 
deposited there for the purpose of medical treatment by a 
party unknown to the proprietor. 

It sometimes happens that the reward offered for the re- 
covery of a stolen dog is not deemed of sufficient amount by 
the thief in possession, who will coolly negotiate for a more 
liberal remuneration. A friend of the writer lost a handsome 
spaniel, and had bills printed, offering a guinea for his 
recovery. Next day he received a note, informing him that 
if the reward were doubled he would see his favourite in the 
course of a few hours. A reply, acceding to the demand, was 
despatched to the address indicated in the note. The owner 
was accosted a few hours after, on his way home from office 
in the evening, by two men, one bearing the dog in his arms ; 
and though he had formed an excellent plan for recovering 
possession of his own without paying anything, he yet found 
it necessary to keep to the terms of his contract, or else forego 
for ever the recovery of the dog — an alternative not to be 
thought of. 

Dog- stealing would appear to be carried on with more im- 
punity than any other species of theft, seeing that the con- 
victions, when viewed in connection with the number of 
offences daily and almost hourly occurring, are astonishingly 
few. 



164 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 



THE DRINK DOCTOR. 

In what dark, dim, and mystical region of the metropolis 
this potent and indispensable ally of the licensed victualler 
and the gin -king has fixed his habitat we conld never yet 
succeed in discovering ; but we have marked well his doings, 
and have strictly noted his stealthy but undeviating appear- 
ance in the wake of the distiller's cart and the brewer's dray, 
in whose track he follows as sure as night succeeds to sunset. 
Come forth thou man of mystery ; present thyself for once 
to the eye of day ; and though the sun never yet shone upon 
the performance of thy secret labours, yet allow his gladsome 
rays to reveal to us thy lineaments for this once only ; show 
thy grave face to the glare of noon, and attest if thou wilt 
the truth of our delineation, while we portray thee and thy 
function for the benefit of that public from whose gaze thou 
modestly retirest, and whom — thyself withdrawn in diffident 
obscurity — thou art content to poison in the pursuit of thy 
quiet and unobtrusive profession ! 

Mister Quintin Quassia, D.D., as the gin-spinners and beer- 
druggers who require his services gravely address him, is a 
being of seedy garb, of saturnine aspect, and taciturn dispo- 
sition. He is a member of no learned profession, and is in 
possession of no degree, save a very considerable degree of 
quiet impudence and self-possession. Though enjoying the 
designation of Doctor — a title which he doubtless owes to 
his abundant use of drugs in the practice of his art — he 
would be perhaps better described as a professor of magic- 
multiplication, seeing that, without condescending to have 
recourse to a vulgar arithmetical process, he has the power of 
doubling, ay, and more than doubling, the quantity of cer- 
tain potables as delivered per invoice into the cellar of the 
publican. Under his miraculous management three hogs- 



THE DRINK DOCTOR. 165 

heads of proof gin from the distillers shall in the course of 
a single night become transformed into seven substantial 
hogsheads of " Cream of the Yalley." He has the assistance 
of a redoubtable necromancer in the person of Father Thames, 
whom he secretly invokes from his oozy bed at the dead of 
night. He has also another liquid spirit at his beck — a spirit 
whose touch is torture, and whose function it frequently is to 
burn what fire will not consume — the fiend of sulphuric acid, 
whose vulgar retail name is vitriol. In his pouch he carries 
poisons of terrible efficacy, and thrist- exciting drugs to con- 
summate his work. 

The presence of Quintin Quassia at the publican's is inva- 
riably required, as we have intimated above, after the arrival 
of a consignment of spirits from the distiller, and is always 
preceded by the advent of a number of goodly cones of loaf- 
sugar, without the admixture of which the gin- drinking 
legions of London would not tolerate a drop of the diabolical 
mixture concocted for them. Upon such occasions the doctor 
may be seen dropping in, as though accidentally, at the bar- 
parlour a few moments before the hour of closing ; taking a 
seat as a customer, he sits sipping a glass of grog until the 
last lingering sot has cleared out — when, presto! he and the 
landlord, stripping to their shirt sleeves, are off to the cellar, 
and plunged at once into the mysteries of that manufacture 
upon the success of which the prosperity and reputation of 
the arena of drunkenness and demoralization mainly depend. 
The floods of life -destroying liquor sold in London daily under 
the names of " Cordial Gin," "Cream of the Yalley," "Old 
Tom," and a dozen other popular appellations, are all so many 
specious mixtures, having pure unsweetened spirits as a basis, 
made up to suit the sophisticated taste of the London drunk- 
ard. Were the spirit retailed to the public in the same con- 
dition in which it is consigned by the distiller to the publican, 
the latter would soon find his customers reduced to less than 
a tithe of their present number. The mild though potent 



166 CT7UI0SITIES OF LO^DOX LIEE. 

flavour of unmixed spirits has not sufficient zest for the dregs 
of the London population, who are the principal supporters 
of the gin-shop ; they look for the fiery sting that vitriol im- 
parts, which they relish for its fatal warmth, and consider as 
a proof of the genuineness of the poison they imbibe. More- 
over, they require it highly sweetened, and in this they are 
amply indulged by the doctor, who knows that their depraved 
thirst is rather excited than satisfied by sweetened spirits. 

The enormous fortunes realized by the proprietors of gin- 
shops situated in certain favourable localities are altogether 
due to the operations of the Drink-Doctor upon the material 
there so abundantly retailed over the counter, and " drunk on 
the premises. " It is a fact that gin is often ostensibly sold 
at many of these palaces at a cost scarcely a fraction above 
that at which it can be furnished by the distillers. We once 
asked the proprietor of one of these thriving temples of vice 
how it came to pass that he could sell his "mountain dew/' 
as he called it, at a price which barely covered the original 
cost of the neat spirits. " You know nothing about it," said 
he: "if the cost were double what it is, I should make a 
spanking profit out of it notwithstanding." Of course he 
could. We had not then had the pleasure of the doctor's 
acquaintance, nor obtained any insight into the nature of his 
nocturnal orgies. 

The extravagant and plundering profit realized by the gin- 
spinner sufficiently accounts for the eagerness with which 
licenses are sought after whenever a pretext can be found or 
formed for opening a public-house or a gin-shop. The growth 
of these places is gradual, but unfortunately too certain. 
The plan generally pursued in the metropolis is this : a beer- 
shop is first started in a carefully- selected locality; every 
means is used to draw custom to the spot ; the liquor sold is 
good, cheap, and unadulterated ; and a reputation is speedily 
gained for the house among the operative classes, whose great 
delight, recreation, and luxury is beer. When the trade is 



THE DKLNK DOCTOR. 167 

nursed up to its highest point, a memorial is got up, addressed 
to the proper magisterial authorities, and signed by every 
householder in the neighbourhood whose signature can be by 
any means obtained. This is forwarded to the magistrates, 
who at their next district meeting consider the claims of all 
applicants ; and if the petitioner have any influence, or any 
friend among the magnates of his parish, a license is pretty 
sure to be granted. In a very short period the humble Tom 
and Jerry shop is transformed into a gin-palace — the whole- 
some beer is gradually changed for a loathsome physicky wash, 
in order that the customers may prefer spirits to beer — the 
manufacture of vitriol and sugar commences — and the neigh- 
bourhood, changed from "Beer Street " to " Gin Lane," is in 
due course of being poisoned and demoralized secundum artem 
— the proprietor confidently contemplating a retirement at no 
distant period upon a comfortable estate. Any time between 
ten and twenty years ago this prospect was pretty sure to be 
realized by any one fortunate enough to obtain a license, and 
(being unencumbered by moral or conscientious scruples) in 
the possession of moderate industry and perseverance. We 
knew a young man who, without a single talent, or capacity 
enough for a tradesman's craft, in seven years realized a clear 
ten thousand pounds, and retired upon that capital to the 
enjoyment of a country life while yet in his twenty-ninth 
year ! 

The doings of the doctor in the beer department are not of 
so miraculous a character as those already described, still they 
are worthy of note. Though the contents of a cask of beer 
cannot be doubled with any probability of finding a thorough- 
fare through the popular throat, yet they may, with cautious 
management, be increased some thirty or forty per cent. 
Quassia, liquorice, coculus Indicus, and certain other cheap 
ingredients, will carry a profitable quantity of water, and yet 
impart a flavour to the beer which, so far from being repul- 
sive to the palate of the London sot, long trained by the pub- 



168 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

licans to the tolerance of such poisons, is rather agreeable 
than otherwise. But the chief aim of the doctor with regard 
to beer is to render it provocative of thirst, so that the fatigued 
workman who comes in for a glass to refresh himself, may 
find, upon drinking it, that a quart more at least is necessary 
to quench the thirst it has excited. By this means drunkards 
are manufactured by degrees, and thus men sit the livelong 
evenings through, drinking eight or ten pints consecutively, 
and wondering the while at their own capacities for imbibition. 
It is by the aid of the doctor that the weakest wash of the 
brewer is transformed at times into treble X. Under his 
talismanic charm simple porter becomes donble stout, and 
fetches more than double price. He knows the precise taste 
of all classes of customers, and readily prepares from the com- 
mon staple supplied by the brewer either the full-bodied 
"lush," in which the swart and brawny coal-heaver luxu- 
riates, or the thin supper beer of the sober tradesman or 
sedentary clerk. He is called into council invariably when a 
new house is opened, and pronounces learnedly upon the pre- 
cise character of the beverage which will suit the neighbour- 
hood, and which of course he undertakes to manufacture. 
His exploits have, however, been much limited of late years, 
owing to the opening of a vast number of houses belonging to 
brewers, who, not cherishing any great opinion of the doctor's 
skill, prefer that the beer -bibbing public should have an oppor- 
tunity of fairly estimating their own, and who consequently 
make it a rigid condition with their tenants (who are required 
to deal exclusively with their landlords) that the malt liquors 
they are supplied with shall be retailed to the public in an 
unsophisticated state. Still, the doctor has his laugh against 
the brewer ; for it is a lamentable fact that his artifices have 
been so long and so successfully practised, that the public 
palate is almost universally vitiated, and pretty generally 
revolts against the taste of unadulterated malt liquor. As a 
consequence, the "brewers' houses" are comparatively de- 



THE PAWNEE. 169 

serted, or else owe what degree of reputation and encourage- 
ment they enjoy to the success their owners may attain in 
acting as their own doctors, and counterfeiting those factitious 
beverages which the drinking public persist in preferring to 
the honest infusion of malt and hops. 

One would imagine that a man whose entire occupation 
consisted of adulteration in one form or other would be at 
least so far awake to the consequence of indulgence in such 
villanous potions as we have described as to refrain from par- 
taking of them himself. No such thing, however ; the doctor 
is a doomed drunkard, and sooner or later sinks to the lowest 
abyss of drunken degradation, and dies the drunkard's death. 
Perhaps it is but justice that such a knave should perish in 
the pit which it has been the business of his life to prepare 
for his fellow-creatures. 

THE PAWNEE. 

This is an ingenious and impudent scamp, who prides him- 
self upon being able to get a living out of those who thrive 
and grow fat upon the distress and ruin of the necessitous 
classes. He is not unusually a tailor out of work, having no 
intention of getting in work if he can by any possibility avoid 
it ; because he greatly prefers his liberty in the public tho- 
roughfares, and the companionship of tap-room associates, to 
squatting eternally cross-legged upon the shop-board, engaged 
in the, to him, hopeless attempt of what Beau Brummel called 
achieving a collar. It would appear at first view that to 
make a profit by pledging were a still more hopeless task : he 
does not find it so. He knows that as in all other trades, so 
among the pawnbrokers, a violent competition prevails. In 
order to preserve their connection, and, if possible, to 
increase it, those who lend money upon the security of 
goods find themselves compelled to advance sums approxi- 
mating as near as the safety of each several transaction 

i 



170 CURIOSITIES 0E LOXBOX LIFE. 

will allow to the actual commercial value of the goods 
hypothecated. So thoroughly is this principle carried out, 
that iu those densely-populated neighbourhoods where pawn- 
brokers abound, any domestic utensil or commonly-used 
article of wearing apparel would be estimated at a dozen dif- 
ferent establishments consecutively at a price hardly varying 
a fraction, and verging closely upon the value it would sell 
for at an auction. It is clear, then, that if the pawner can 
succeed in enhancing the apparent value of his wares, or if 
he can impose upon the pawnbroker by any kind of deception, 
he may procure a loan of the full value, or even sometimes 
above the full value, of the pledged articles. This he knows 
full well; but he knows something more — namely, that every 
breathing pawnbroker would rather lend three shillings than 
five, because the law allows the same interest upon both sums ; 
or six shillings than ten, for the same reason. These facts 
being premised, behold him walking into a pawnbroker's shop 
with half-a-dozen pieces of figured waistcoatings on his arm, 
and a tailor's thimble on his finger. "Here," says he, "I've 
got six waistcoats to make, and I must spout one to buy the 
trimmings; let's have three shillings." Xow three shillings 
has the smack of a bargain to the pawnbroker, who, if he 
has not been " done " before, will lend the money to a tailor 
thus circumstanced without much hesitation, even though the 
article impounded be scarcely worth more. In this way the 
plausible rascal manages to get off the raw material of coats, 
waistcoats, and trousers in considerable abundance ; some cut 
out ready for making, though not intended ever to be made 
by him ; others in the shape of remnants of cloth, speciously 
prepared to simulate a fine quality. It is not to be supposed 
that he invariably obtains from the pawnbrokers the entire 
value of his goods ; that, indeed, is of no great consequence, 
because he knows how to find or to make a market for the 
duplicates, from which it is that he principally makes his 
profit. 



THE PAWXEE, 171 

It is a fact pretty well known to all who have paid any 
continuous attention to the habits of the operative classes, 
that by far the major part of the working-men of London 
muddle away the leisure of their evenings in the tap -rooms, 
or purlieus of beer- shops and public-houses. As these places 
are free to all comers, the pawner finds himself of an evening 
in the company of some dozen or score of thirsty artificers, 
who, having drowned what little prudence and caution they 
had in successive pots of beer, are in the precise condition he 
would wish them to be. Assuming the character of a broken- 
down tradesman, who has been compelled by misfortune to 
part with everything, he humbly requests any kind-hearted 
gentleman present who would do him a service, and at the 
same time secure an advantageous bargain for himself, to look 
at the various duplicates of his stock in trade, and select any 
article that may suit him. In this manner he contrives to 
get rid of the greater part of his tickets, and frequently rea- 
lizes, fro m the combined transactions with the pawnbroker and 
the public-house dupe, cent, per cent, upon the original cost 
of his curiously-managed merchandise. 

It may be readily conceived that the pawner does not con- 
fine himself to any particular kind of stock. Besides clothing, 
and the materials for clothing, he trades in articles of jew- 
ellery, silver and gold watches, mathematical and scientific 
instruments, fiddles, flutes, and trumpets — everything, in 
short, in a portable form and of indefinite value. These he 
picks up at auction sales ; and as he gives but one price for 
an article for which he is pretty sure of obtaining two prices, 
his profit is neither small nor uncertain. He is also some- 
times known to turn his trade of tailor to good account, by 
turning an old coat bought for a few shillings, pledging it, 
and selling the duplicate to a simpleton credulous enough to 
pay the price of a new one. 

The career of this peddling rascal is of comparatively brief 
duration. In a few short years at most he wears out his voca- 

i 2 



172 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

tion, through, want of prudence in carrying it on. The pawn- 
brokers in quick time get his face by heart, and his beer- 
drinking dupes are very apt to avenge their victimization by 
the exercise of a species of Lynch-law, which effectually 
indisposes him to farther experiments upon their pockets. 
When debarred from the practice of his nefarious occupation, 
he cannot return to industrious labour, but generally takes to 
the road in the character of a tramp, and lives as long as he 
can upon the forced contributions of the industrious members 
of his craft. This is the lowest, as it is generally the last, 
stage of degradation ; and it is vain to look for him further. 

ArCTION GANGS. 

It would appear to an uninitiated observer that property of 
any description, which has been consigned to an auctioneer 
for disposal by public sale, which is submitted to public com- 
petition, and which can be sold only with the auctioneer's 
consent and complicity, is pretty sure of producing, if not 
something like its actual value in the commercial market, at 
least its value to the parties present at the sale, minus that 
fair retailer's profit which it ought to be the effect of general 
competition to reduce to its minimum amount. However 
reasonable such an expectation, nothing is more uncertain 
than its realisation in the numerous auction marts in the 
metropolis. There exists a system of wholesale theft and 
robbery so widely diffused, and so universally carried into 
execution, that it is impossible to form any estimate of the 
plunder, which must be enormous in its aggregate amount, 
and which forms the daily and hourly booty of a set of heart- 
less and unprincipled harpies, who grow rich and fatten upon 
the domestic misfortunes of their fellow-men. By the opera- 
tion of this nefarious system, the apparently fair and honest 
procedure of sale by public roup is utterly vitiated ; and the 
auctioneer — who in a case of unreserved sale, such as that in 



AUCTION GANGS. 173 

which the property is adjudged to the hammer under a distress 
warrant, has no power either to protect the rights of the 
unfortunate owners, or to save himself from the degraded 
position he is forced to occupy — is made the unwilling tool of 
a set of scoundrels, to whom he is compelled to assign, one 
after another, articles frequently of high finish and sterling 
yalue, for sums paltry in the extreme, if not merely nominal. 

Those who have noticed the rapid, almost sudden, growth 
and expansion of certain brokering chapmen and dealers in 
articles of furniture, pictures, musical instruments, curiosities, 
bronzes, vases, and objects of vertu, must have been often 
struck with surprise at their miraculously speedy prosperity. 
The small front shop soon bursts into the back parlour ; it 
then creeps upstairs; then the proprietor buys out his neigh- 
bours, and overflows first on one side, then on the other, with 
his fast-increasing stock, till at length half the street, or the 
whole of it, is one huge repository of everything domestic 
which necessity, luxury, or vanity can demand and industry 
supply. The course of knavery we are about to describe may 
serve to moderate the surprise of the observer. 

Be it understood, then, that there exists a species of federal 
union, never talked about, yet open to all whose trade it is to 
buy by auction for purposes of retailing. The primary object 
of this union is, to suppress and prevent that competition 
which it is the purpose of public sale to elicit. As a general 
rule it may be affirmed that of this union every broker, dealer 
or buyer by trade, whose principle of integrity is not suf- 
ficiently strong to resist the temptation, is, tacitly at least, a 
member. And indeed, however honest a dealer may be, he is 
often compelled in self-defence to wink at the proceedings of 
the gang, even though he refrain from participating in their 
vile gains. We must not be supposed to infer that this 
iniquitous confederation is organised upon any regular system 
— that it boasts of any rules or written documents of any 
kind. Such a tangible embodiment of its principles would of 



174 CUKIOSITIES OF LOKDOX LIFE. 

course be fraught with peril to the parties concerned, and is 
therefore avoided. The phrase "honour among thieves' ' 
expresses the sole law by which the proceedings of its nume- 
rous members are regulated ; and though they often quarrel 
bitterly over the division of the spoil, and have been seen to 
fight furiously for their imagined rights, they are never known 
to have recourse to the law for protection. From all we can 
gather concerning the origin of this foul conspiracy — and we 
have taken some pains in the investigation — it would appear 
that it has been of slow and gradual growth, and that it was, 
in the first place, the spontaneous offspring of the cupidity and 
dishonesty of a very limited group of confederated rascals. 
It is affirmed — with what truth we know not — that it was 
first detected in operation among the Jews of a certain locality, 
and that it was immediately imitated on all sides, instead of 
being suppressed, as it might have been, by the strong arm of 
the law and the force of public rebuke, had the infernal 
machinations of its members been made known. However 
this may be, it is pretty certain that since its first rise, which 
might be dated at less than a score of years back, it has spread 
like a pestilence to every part of the metropolis ; and that, at 
the present moment, it cannot be predicated with absolute 
certainty of any auction-room situated between Knightsb ridge 
west and Mile- end east, or Highgate north and Peckham 
south, that on any given day in the year there shall be a fair 
sale of any specified kind of portable property. If the gang 
be present — and they are always present if the property to 
be disposed of offers them any considerable advantage — they 
will be sure to accomplish two things : in the first place, they 
will get most of the lots they desiderate knocked down to 
them at a low bidding ; and, in the second place, they will 
prevent any stranger, who is not a professional buyer, from 
obtaining any article for a sum much less than double its 
value. 

On a certain day in the year 1847 — we do not choose, for 



AUCTION GANGS. 175 

certain reasons, to be more particular as to date — we attended 
a sale, where, among other valuable species of property, a 
pretty large collection of pictures was to be sold. Our object 
was to purchase a clever production of Fuseli's, should it fall 
within the limited range of our pocket. Being pressed for 
time, we had not leisure to change an old office coat in which 
we had sat all the morning, and consequently made our 
appearance at the sale-room in somewhat seedy trim — to 
which accidental circumstance may be doubtless attributed the 
revelation we have to make. It should be mentioned that the 
property was that of a defunct dealer, and that his widow 
was then in the house awaiting with anxious heart the result 
of the sale, upon the proceeds of which her prospect of future 
comfort depended. We found the rostrum of the auctioneer 
surrounded by the auction gang, among whom, all unconscious 
of their honourable fraternisation, we with considerable diffi- 
culty shouldered our way, and obtained a standing position in 
front of the revolving easel upon which the paintings were 
then exhibiting to the crowd of bidders. 

" Are you in ?" said a greasy, grizzly-bearded face, reeking 
over our shoulder. 

" Yes, thank Heaven, we are in," said we, mistaking the 
purport of the question. 

" Oh, it's all right," said the questioner, turning to those 
behind him : " he's in" 

"We need not detail the whole of the conversation we over- 
heard — enough to say that we soon discovered something of 
the nature of the conspiracy, and saw its profitable but vil- 
lanous operation in full swing. Most of the pictures of great- 
est value were knocked down at wretched prices to three or 
four members of the gang ; and once when a stranger endea- 
voured to secure a piece of some merit, the biddings were run 
up against him to an amount far beyond its utmost value, 
until he ceased to bid, when the lot was knocked down to one 
of the gang, who immediately repudiated his bidding, and 



176 CURIOSITIES OF LO^DOX LIFE. 

swore that he did not intend to bid more than a certain sum. 
After some squabbling, the lot was put up again, and bought 
by the gang against the stranger for far more than its worth. 
Once when we hazarded a bidding for the lot we came to 
purchase, we were stopped with, " Shut up, you fool ; that's 

's bidding: hold your mouth — you'll get it for nothing 

if you want it, at the knocJc-out" 

" At the knock-out!" we mentally ejaculated; "what 
upon earth is that?" "We had heard the expression before, 
though casually, and it had escaped our memory; but we 
resolved this time, if possible, to penetrate the mystery, and 
learn whether it really was what we already began to suspect 
it to be. 

"And where," said we in as careless a tone as we could 
assume, "does the knock-out come off this time?" 

" Oh, at the old place ; at 's back-room up stairs." 

"What! C Court ?" (This was a leading question, as 

we knew no one at C Court.) 

"JSTo; at W Street." 

"To-night of course?" 

"To be sure — half-past eight or nine." 

We did not fail, shortly before nine o'clock, to ascend the 

stairs to the back-room of the house indicated in W Street. 

Before the hour had struck, the whole of the gang was pre- 
sent, and comprehended a much larger number than we had 
expected to meet. Among them we recognised several owners 
of first-rate shops, men of property and capital — one especially, 
who had recently portioned his daughter with thousands, along 
with others of tmdoiibtecl respectability. Seating ourselves 
near the door, and calling for grog on the principle of doing 
at Rome as Romans do, we awaited with interest the result of 
the proceedings. A number of the smaller and more valuable 
paintings — gems of the Italian and Flemish schools — a few 
English specimens, and several finely -wrought, vases and 
bronzes, had been already "cleared," and deposited in the 



AUCTION GANGS. 177 

old-fashioned window-recesses, and upon tables in the room. 
As it was now past the hour, and all were supposed to be 
present, the door was closed upon the ejected waiter, and the 
" knock-out," which, as we had suspected, was nothing more 
or less than the real sale of the property, commenced. An 
individual, whom we shall designate Smash, whose vampyre- 
looking physiognomy is too well known to the frequenters of 
certain salerooms, was the unlicensed auctioneer of the even- 
ing. Catalogues being produced, all the lots bought by the 
gang were gone over seriatim, and now for the first time put 
up to serious competition. One by one they were knocked 
down to eager purchasers at prices varying from double to ten 
times the sums for which they had been obtained but a few 
hours before. Cash was paid down for each lot as it was sold, 
and deposited in a small tray in front of the seller, the lots, 
or an order upon the auctioneer for such lots as had not been 
cleared, being delivered to the respective purchasers. "When 
the whole of them had been disposed of, the mass of gold and 
silver in the tray had accumulated to a considerable size. 
Smash then resigning the hammer, reimbursed from the heap 
before him the parties who had cleared the lots present — those 
who had purchased lots yet in the custody of the auctioneer 
having of course paid to the heap the difference only between 
the final biddings at the sham sale and the real one. These 
payments concluded, a considerable sum, the produce of that 
day's diabolical robbery of a forlorn and widowed woman, 
remained to be divided among the wretches who had thus 
successfully combined to plunder the helpless. When the 
sale was over, we could not help remarking that the whole of 
the property rested finally in the hands of three or four 
persons — Smash being one of them, as he had bid pretty 
freely, and consigned several good lots to himself. A few of 
the articles which had been run up to a high price, in oppo- 
sition to parties who, not being in the gang, had presumed to 
bid against it, hardly realised half the sums they had cost \ 

i3 



178 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

but the loss upon these was compensated tenfold by the gain 
upon the remainder. And now came the division of the spoil, 
which was eventually managed upon a principle too complex 
to be fathomed by a casual observer. We noticed, however, 
when Smash read over the schedule, which occupied some 
time in preparing, that the individuals who had paid most 
money were to receive the largest share; and that those who 
bought nothing, and most probably never intended to buy, 
were to be paid at a lower rate. We did not witness the 
final distribution of the cash. Having no desire to pollute 
our fingers by the touch of such ill-gotten gain, we feigned a 
sudden excuse for quitting the room ; and requesting our 
grizzly-faced friend to take charge "for two minutes" of our 
untasted grog, we quitted in sovereign disgust this den of 
ill- doers, who wanted only the virtues of personal courage 
and outspoken sincerity, to elevate them to the level of the 
burglar and the highwayman. 

It is some years since we became thus aware of the ex- 
istence of this atrocious system of plunder, and we have 
since frequently detected it in operation where we little 
expected to meet it. At bo ok- sales it is a perfect nuisance. 
There are several scores of petty scoundrels who pass their 
lives at book-auctions, rarely bidding, and never buying if 
they can avoid it, and whose sole means of subsistence is this 
meanest of all possible modes of plunder. From inquiries we 
have cautiously made — for it is not an easy matter to obtain 
reliable information from the parties implicated — we are in- 
duced to believe that the majority of the real buyers would 
be glad to abate the practice, or put it down altogether, if 
possible. They find that where, as is generally the case with 
regard to books, the separate purchases are rarely of any great 
value, the trouble and inconvenience the practice entails are 
not compensated by the profit it affords : but the miserable 
wretches to whom such stolen scraps are daily bread, stick too 
hard upon their skirts to be readily got rid of. 



THE "ESTABLISHED BUSINESS SWINDLE. 179 

It is a melancholy thing, and one that speaks volumes upon 
the demoralising effect of bargain -hunting upon the character, 
that among these plunderers of the weak, the friendless, and 
the prostrate in circumstances, should be numbered names of 
respectable standing in commerce — names well known and 
trusted among connoisseurs and collectors of works of art, 
relics of antiquity, or objects of vertii. But there is un- 
happily no margin left for doubt upon the subject. It would 
be in our power, on any given day, in the course of a few 
hours' visit to some of the finest collections of the first-class 
dealers in such matters in the metropolis, to pitch upon a score 
or two of valuable specimens which have come into the pos- 
session of the present owners through the scandalous medium 
of the " knock-out."*' These men, be it remembered, have 
not the plea of necessity to advance in mitigation of their 
acts ; they are surrounded with the materials and appliances 
of luxury, and have wealth at command, and might reasonably 
be expected to set an example of honesty in the pursuit of a 
profession which is sadly in want of it. 



THE "ESTABLISHED BUSINESS " SWINDLE. 

Just on the same principle as the American backwoodsman 
locates upon a plot of savage territory, fells the forest timber, 
burns the lumber, ploughs and sows the reclaimed land — 
then sells the whole clearing, stock, lot, and coming crop, to 

* We saw, while writing this article, a very valuable painting bought 
by one of these gangs at a late sale of the property of a deceased pro - 
prietor, for a sum hardly covering the cost of the frame and the 
materials used in painting. What it realised at the " knock-out," and 
what was consequently the amount of plunder shared among the gang 
we were not able to ascertain. One thinsr we can state with certaintv, 
and that is, that the present custodier of the picture (it would he an 
abuse of language to call him the proprietor) demands above a 
thousand guineas for it ; and, considering its rare quality and tran- 
scendant merit, seems not unlikely to obtain the sum he demands. 



180 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

some wandering emigrant in search of a settlement — so in 
London there is a class of men (and, we may add, of women 
too) whose favourite occupation it is to open new shops, and 
dig out, as it were, new channels for the currents of commerce, 
in the yet untried neighbourhoods of the ever-increasing me- 
tropolis ; selling their newly-formed establishments so soon as 
they are set a-going, and in a fair way of success, either to 
new-married couples, country immigrants, or other parties 
whom they may suit. Against such a mode of gaining a 
livelihood, however singular it may appear to some, nothing 
can be justly said. These parties are often of essential service 
to the community, to whom they frequently introduce the 
conveniences of retail trade in localities which, without their 
speculative enterprise, would long remain strangers to them. 
They are the pioneers of traffic, whose mission it is to clear 
the way for the commercial host which has in due time to 
follow in their footsteps. They owe their success (and most 
of them are successful) to the possession of a rare tact and 
discrimination in reference to business matters, as well as to a 
considerable amount of that constitutional energy and rest- 
lessness which so remarkably characterise their prototype of 
the "far west." But as everything successful in London is 
sure to give birth to its counterfeit, so in this peculiar walk of 
life there are hundreds of unprincipled knaves who make a 
prey of the stranger and the inexperienced by the sale, under 
lying pretences, of mock establishments, whose pretended 
returns have no existence save in the records of a set of plau- 
sible account-books, artfully made up for the purpose of 
defrauding the unwary. 

We shall more effectually expose the modus operandi of this 
sort of swindlers by a brief recital of what actually occurred 
to a friend of our own who unhappily fell into their clutches, 
than by any formal description that could be given. 

In the year 184 — , "Walter S found himself, at the de- 
mise of his last surviving parent, under the necessity of 



THE " ESTABLISHED BUSINESS SWINDLE. 181 

seeking a livelihood. With youth, health, and a tolerably 
good education, and with £600 in his pocket, he left his native 
place, and came to London to prosecute his fortune. After 
pushing his inquiries in town for near three months, without 
finding anything to suit him, he began to turn his attention 
to the morning papers, and to con the advertisements with a 
degree of interest which can only be appreciated by those 
who have been in similar circumstances. At length, lured by 
the prospect of a good income in return for very moderate ex- 
ertions, he applied personally at the office of a house agent in 
Oxford Street, who had advertised his business for sale. The 
office was a sort of semi- shop on the ground-floor, at the west 
end of the street ; and though bearing a remarkably neat and 
genteel appearance, had withal a somewhat worn and business 
aspect. This he thought looked well. Having made his pur- 
pose known to the single clerk, that functionary touched a 
bell, which brought out the principal from an inner chamber 
— a sober, rather sad-visaged, well-dressed individual, of 
about five-and-thirty, in deep mourning. Upon making known 
the object of his visit, and referring to the advertisement in 
the " Times " of that morning, the advertiser demanded 
whether it was the intention of his visitor to purchase the 
business for himself, or was he merely making inquiries on 

behalf of another person ? S replied that he was acting 

solely on his own account, and that, if the business bore out 
the terms of the advertisement, it was his intention to make 
him an offer. 

"I could easily satisfy you," said the other, "that this 
business would have justified me in employing much stronger 
terms of recommendation ; but the fact is, that although I 
have doubled the returns since I bought it myself, I have no 
wish to recover more than the money I paid for it — the death 
of a relative having released me from the further necessity of 
any business occupation at all. But I fear you are too late ; 
I parted with a gentleman not an hour ago who has all but 



182 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

decided upon taking it. It is a pity you did not apply before : 
I cannot say anything decisive on it at present. Good- 
morning, sir." 

" Good- morning ;" and S had already reached the 

door, disappointment in his face, when the other cried, "Stop; 
you may give me your address. It is possible the first appli- 
cant may not conclude the affair. It strikes me, from some 
remarks he let drop, that he may not have the cash at hand, 
in which case I will let you know the day after to-morrow. 
By the way, we may as well understand each other — you will 
allow me to ask you if you are prepared to pay cash down, or 
at what date, supposing we should do business together ?" 

"Why," said S , "I had not resolved to offer you the 

exact amount you demand ; but I will say this, that if, after 
full investigation of the business and returns, we should deal, 
it will be for cash." 

"In that case," said the agent, "you shall have the pre- 
ference if the party who has just left does not conclude the 
purchase. Perhaps you will look in at eleven the day after 
to-morrow, and thus save time?" 

S promised he would do so punctually, and departed, 

not without hopes of becoming yet the proprietor of so snug a 
concern. 

At eleven precisely on the day appointed S opened the 

office door. The principal was standing at the desk in earnest, 
almost angry, discussion with an elderly man of gentlemanly 
garb and manners. He nodded to the new-comer, and motioned 
to his clerk to show him into the private room, which was so 

situated that S could not avoid hearing every syllable 

that was uttered in the office. He soon became aware that 
the stranger was the first applicant whose rivalry he had so 
much dreaded ; and he heard with secret satisfaction, that 
though eagerly desirous of securing the business, he was not 
in a condition to pay down the required sum upon taking pos- 
session. He pleaded hard to be allowed to make a deposit of 



THE "ESTABLISHED BUSINESS" SWINDLE. 183 

part of the purchase-money, by way of binding the bargain, 
offering three hundred pounds in cash, and the rest in bills of 
short date. This the agent would by no means allow, and 
upbraided him with having deceived him in that particular at 
their former interviews. The stranger retorted, and the dis- 
cussion grew almost into a quarrel, both parties becoming less 
ceremonious as the dispute waxed warm. It ended at last in 
the agent bowing out his would-be successor, who departed 
muttering his dissatisfaction in no measured terms. 

The coast was now clear for S , with whom, after 

apologising for the warmth of his language to the stranger, 

and remarking that it was a singular coincidence that S ■ 

should have arrived just in time to witness their disagreement, 
an arrangement was entered into for examining the books and 
testing the present state of the business. References having 
been exchanged on both sides, that same afternoon the books 
of the last two years were gone over cursorily, but carefully, 
and checked with the annual audits, in a manner, and with a 
result, perfectly satisfactory to the incoming proprietor. 
During the examination two parties called and paid £5 as 
per-centage on houses let by the agent. Before leaving the 

premises, at sunset, S had agreed to spend the ensuing 

fortnight in the office, as well to test the average returns, as 
to learn the simple routine of management. The fortnight 
passed pleasantly enough. The books were left in the hands 

of S , who conned them carefully, and never conceived 

the slightest suspicion of their genuineness. The clerk proved 
a rollicking out-spoken fellow, fond of cigars and bottled ale, 
and made no scruple of abusing his employer for not having 
raised his salary beyond a paltry hundred — affirmed that to 
his exertions and attention the success of the office was mainly 

due — and hoped that S , on assuming the government, 

would have the liberality to do him justice. There was no 
lack of business during the period of probation. Persons 
dropped in with notices of houses and premises to let, for the 



184 CTJEIOSITIES OE LOKDON LIFE. 

registry and exhibition of which on the office show-boards 
they paid willingly, according to a liberal scale of charges. 
The principal was absent for honrs together every day, and 

once for two whole days, dnring which S had the luck to 

let a mansion in a neighbouring square for £180 a year — ac- 
companied the incoming tenant in the examination of the 
premises, and received from the landlord 5 per cent, upon the 
first year's rent. In addition to this, business was transacted 
of a less important character, but which yet yielded a com- 
fortable profit to the agent. As the fortnight drew to a close, 
it appeared plainly enough that the profits averaged altogether, 

after paying expenses, nearly £10 a week; and S began 

to think it was a pity that he had not struck the bargain 
before, and pocketed them himself. When the time was up, 
and the agent asked him if he was satisfied with what they 
were doing, and was disposed to conclude the affair, he was 
but too ready to do so ; and the next day a lawyer was called 
in, an agreement drawn up in due form, and signed by both 

parties ; £450 was paid down by S , and bills at short 

dates were given for £150 more. The " agreement for a lease" 
of the offices, and the landlord's receipts for rents, together 
with all books and documents connected with the business, 
were made over to the new purchaser ; and before starting for 
the north to " take possession of his newly-bequeathed 

property," the agent secretly advised S to get rid of the 

clerk. " You will find that you can easily manage the whole 
affair yourself," said he ; " and you may as well save the ex- 
pense of such a fellow, who is likely to prove an annoyance to 
any one who does not know how to manage him as I do." 
This recommendation proved in the result quite unnecessary. 

g took up what he now considered his permanent quarters 

on the ensuing day, and hired a sleeping-room close by for the 
better convenience of business. But no clerk made his ap- 
pearance. This did not at first trouble the new proprietor, 
who attributed his absence to some convivial irregularity, 



THE " ESTABLISHED BUSINESS" SWINDLE. 185 

and felt pretty sure of his speedy return. Two, three, four 
days — a whole week passed, and no clerk — and what, alas! 

was a thousand times worse, not a single customer ! S , 

now a prey to awful suspicions of foul play, lived upon tenter- 
hooks. Another and another week elapsed ; and though the 
stream of population rushed incessantly past the office door, 
there were hardly more signs of business in the deserted 
rooms within than in the silent mummy chamber of an Egyp- 
tian pyramid. At length, when nearly two months had 
passed away without the realization of a single shilling, and 

S had become gradually awake to the completeness of his 

victimisation, a stranger called with a demand for two quarters' 
rent, and threatened to seize if it were not paid immediately. 

S produced his receipts up to the last quarter, which 

proved to be mere fabrications, signed with a name the same 
in sound, but differing in spelling from that of the real land- 
lord. Prom explanations that ensued, and from reference to 
neighbours, and to the inmates of the upper part of the house, 
the whole machinery of the abominable fraud, which had 
been brought to so successful an issue, was made fully apparent. 
The agent himself, the clerk, the " prior applicant," the cus- 
tomers, the gentleman who had taken the house in the square 
(which house, by the way, belonged to the landlord of that of 
which the office was a part, and was still unlet), the pretended 
landlord, who had paid the per-centage on letting — the very 
lawyer, or supposed lawyer, who had drawn up the agreement 
— all were partners or creatures of one swindling gang. The 
books were a set of documents cooked up for the purpose of 
delusion. Among the scores of notices exhibited on the show- 
boards only one was genuine, and that one was in reference 
to the house in the square, which had been made to play so 
important a part in the swindle. The others, it is true, indi- 
cated houses, shops, and chambers which were actually to let ; 
but they had been copied from similar announcements dis- 
played in other parts of the city, without the sanction of the 



186 CURIOSITIES OP LOXDOX LIFE. 

owners of the premises, and for the purpose of carrying out 
the fraud. As a termination to this villanous affair, poor 

S was fain to evacuate the theatre of his delusion, 

resigning the furniture and fixtures in consideration of a dis- 
charge in full of the landlord's claims for rent, and to 
recommence his researches in London for some career upon 
which he might enter with empty pockets and a little dear- 
bought experience. 

The above is an " ow^er true tale," and is but one of a 
thousand which might be supplied from the private histories 
of multitudes who have fallen victims to conspiracies of the 
same class more or less extensive. Every recurring week 
brings to the metropolis adventurers from the country in 
search of a location in town, and desirous of investing their 
hardly-earned savings, or long-expected inheritance, in some 
established business, or fair speculation, which may offer to 
honest industry the prospect of competence and respectability. 
Such will do well to remember that the land- sharks are here 
on the look-out for their prey, which they will be prevented 
from gorging only by the exercise of the utmost vigilance and 
precaution on the part of their intended victims. 



187 



THE TIDE- WAITRESS. 



The "Venus rising from the sea," of the ancient Greek 
mythology, presents a very different picture to the imagination 
from that afforded by her modern antithesis, the tide-waitress 
of London descending into the bed of the Thames to forage for 
the means of subsistence among the mud and filth of the 
river. 

The tide-waitress has few charms to boast of. Who and 
what she was originally, it would be difficult to guess. She is 
not young, and in what scenes her youth was passed, it would 
be in vain to inquire. Her antecedents are a mystery, the key 
to which is secreted in her own breast ; the romance of her life 
has passed away with her youth; and whether that were 
joyous or grievous, you may ask her if you like — but she will 
not satisfy your curiosity. On the other hand, she is not old ; 
age would shrink aghast from her way of life. An avocation 
pursued in perpetual contact with the mud and moisture of 
the river, is no calling for the woman of threescore and 
upwards, whom poverty has already made familiar with the 
cramps, and rheums, and rheumatisms, which she finds more 
than sufficiently plentiful without the trouble of raking them 
out of the mud. 

!No ; the subject of the present brief sketch is invariably a 
woman in the prime of life, who has seen the world, and cares 
little for its conventionalities or its opinions. Driven, by some 



188 CTBIOSITIES OP LOXDON LIFE. 

cause or other — it maybe by crime, it maybe by want — from 
the acknowledged and beaten paths of industry, she has turned 
aside from the current of human activities, and made a property 
for herself out of the rubbish and the refuse which all the world 
besides are content to surrender as worthless. Upon this she 
contrives to make a living, and to keep out of the workhouse, 
to remain clear of which is the utmost stretch of her ambition. 
Education she has none, and she never had instruction worthy 
the name. All her knowledge is to know the time of low 
water, and the value of the wrecks and waifs which each re- 
clining tide scatters all too scantily over her peculiar domain. 
Her garb and garniture are in appropriate keeping with her 
profession and accomplishments. She is bundled up in tatters 
more plentiful than shapely, and to which the name of dress 
could hardly be applied. On her head is the ragged relict of 
an old bonnet, the crown of which is stuffed with a pad ; an 
old hamper is suspended at her side by a leathern strap round 
the shoulders ; and in front she wears an apron, containing a 
capacious pocket for the reception of articles susceptible of in- 
jury in the basket. She cannot indulge in the luxury of stock- 
ings, but encases her feet in a pair of cast-off Wellingtons, 
begged for the purpose from some charitable householder, and 
cut down to the ankle by her own hand for her especial use. 

Thus equipped, and armed with a stout stick, she goes forth 
to her labour so soon as the tide is half run out, and commences 
her miscellaneous collection amidst the ooze and slime of the 
river. She walks ankle deep in the mire, and occasionally 
omitting to feel her way with the stick, is seen to flounder in 
up to her knees, when she scrambles out again, and coolly 
taking off her boots, will rinse them in the stream before pro- 
ceeding with her work. The wealth which she rescues, half- 
digested, from the maw of Father Thames, is of a various and 
rather equivocal description, and consists of more items than 
we can here specify. TVe can, however, from actual observa- 
tion, testify to a portion of them : these are, firewood in very 



THE TIDE -WAITRESS. 189 

small fragments, with now and then, by way of a prize, a stave 
of an old cask ; broken glass, and bottles either of glass or stone 
unbroken; bones, principally of drowned animals, washed into 
skeletons ; ropes, and fragments of ropes, which will pick into 
tow ; old iron or lead, or metal of any sort which may have 
dropped overboard from passing vessels ; and last, but by no 
means least, coal from the coal barges, which, as they are 
passing up and down all day long, and all the year round, can- 
not fail of dropping a pretty generous tribute to the toils of the 
tide- waitress. Among the coal-owners, however, this nymph 
of the flood, or the mud, is not in very good odour ; they are 
known to entertain a prejudice against her profession. Her 
detractors do not scruple to aver that she cannot be trusted in 
the company of a coal-barge without being seduced by the 
charms of the black diamonds to fill her basket in a dishonest 
manner. We are loth to give credit to the accusation ; at the 
same time we know that it is practically received by the 
wharfingers, who invariably warn her off when she is seen 
wandering too near a stranded barge. 

Besides the materials above mentioned, there is no doubt 
that she occasionally comes upon a prize of more value. A 
bottle of wine from a pleasure boat may come now and then ; 
and sometimes a coin or a purse from the same source; at least 
.we have seen such things go overboard, and it is not impossible 
that the tide-waitress gets them. Some years since one of the 
sisterhood found one afternoon a packet of tradesmen's hand- 
bills buried in the mud under Waterloo Bridge. A waterman, 
who could read, advised her to take them forthwith to the 
owner. She did so, much to the worthy man's astonishment, 
who imagined that they were then in course of distribution by 
his two apprentices, who had left the shop in the morning with 
the avowed object of circulating them to the number of 3,000. 
The lads came home at night ostensibly wearied out with their 
day' s work. They were astounded at the sight of the packet, 
which they had not even untied ; and the youngest immediately 
confessed that, tempted by the other, he had joined in making 



190 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDON LIFE. 

a holiday trip to Gravesend ; that they had thrown the bills 
into the river when off Erith, feeling certain that there was no 
risk of discovery. It was a lesson they were not likely soon 
to forget — that the path of dishonesty and deceit is always a 
thorny one. 

This river gleaner is rather a picturesque object when 
viewed from a good distance. Though her eyes are ever on 
the soil, and though she is constantly raking and handling it, 
yet she never stoops, as a stoop would swamp her skirts in the 
mud ; she bends rather in a kind of graceful arch, supported 
by the stick in one hand. The tide, which proverbially waits 
for no man, shuts her out of her moist domain with rigorous 
punctuality, and then she retires to sort her wares and to con- 
vert them, in different markets, into the few pence which they 
may realize. 

^e feel quite safe in affirming that, little as is to be got by 
it, the above is the most successful kind of fishing that can be 
carried on in the present day in the Thames between London 
Bridge and that of Yauxhall. The times, and the river, too, 
are altered since fishermen cast their nets in the waters off 
"Westminster, and Londoners ate the fish caught in the shadow 
of their own dwellings. It is more than a hundred and sixty 
years ago that, one fine summer's morning, a fisherman who 
was dragging the water off Lambeth Palace, found his net 
pinned fast to the bottom by some weighty substance, which 
seemed very reluctant to move. On lifting it cautiously to the 
surface, it appeared to be a somewhat lumpy piece of metal, 
impressed with certain cabalistic signs, which the finder, who 
was guiltless of the arts of reading and writing, was at a loss 
to comprehend. He pitched it, therefore, into the stern of his 
little craft, and quietly pursued his avocation till his day's 
work was accomplished. In the evening, when he had dis- 
posed of his fish, his thoughts reverted to the lump of metal 
in his boat; and he carried it to the house of one of his 
patrons to ascertain whether or not it might be of value. To 
the amazement of the gentleman into whose hands it was 



THE TIDE- WAITRESS. 191 

thus strangely conveyed — and no less to that of the poor 
fisherman himself — it proved to be the great seal of the 
realm, which had been missing ever since the flight, in the 
preceding winter, of the craven and wrong-headed monarch, 
James the Second. There had been a rigid search made for it 
in all quarters, and from the evidence of Judge Jefferies it 
came out that James, who had always a superstitious kind of 
veneration for the great seal, which he regarded as a sort of 
talisman, had been for some time unwilling to trust it out of 
his sight. He had compelled his chancellor — that blood- 
thirsty judge — to remove from his noble mansion, and to re- 
side in a chamber in Whitehall, in order that the object of his 
solicitude might be always near him. On the night of his 
clandestine flight, he had ordered the great seal and the writs 
for the new parliament to be brought to his bed-chamber. The 
writs he threw into the fire, and the great seal he carried off 
in his hand, and dropped it stealthily into the river opposite 
Lambeth Palace, as he traversed the space from Y nitehall to 
Yauxhall. Whether he thought by this means to deprive 
the acts of his successor of the validity of legal sanction, we 
cannot say : the Prince of Orange managed to do very well 
without it ; and if it had never been fished up to this day, 
but had been left to form part of the treasures of our present 
subject, the tide- waitress, and been sold for old metal at a 
marine- store, we imagine that government would have gone on 
much the same as it has done. 

AVe have introduced the tide-waitress incidentally into royal 
company. It is no great matter. "We leave our readers, if 
they choose, to settle the relative respectability of either 
party. What happened to the fugitive monarch may happen, 
and we fear is likely to happen, to the poor mud-faring 
woman. He died a pauper, dependent on the bounty of an 
alien — and she, alas ! has the workhouse, or, which is perhaps 
more probable, the hospital in perspective, as the consumma- 
tion of her career. 



192 



BUTTERCUPS IN LONDON. 



On a late visit to Covent-garden Market, where I arrived at 
the dawn of day in the month of April, amid the confused 
hubbub and monotonous din of the busy population, my atten- 
tion was arrested by the tall and weather-beaten figure of 
a hoary-headed man, who leaned patiently against one of the 
square pillars of the piazza. Though he was not exactly "the 
oldest man that ever wore grey hairs/ ' he had plainly long 
outlived the threescore and ten years assigned by the Psalmist 
as the usual limits of mortal existence. Though but a few 
white locks clustered sparingly around his bald forehead, 
yet his frame was not bowed by a long life of labour, nor 
the fire of his eye grown dim : the brown hue of health yet 
mantled in his furrowed check, upon which dwelt the expres- 
sion of patriarchal tranquillity and repose ; and an air of 
semi- abstraction marked his aspect, as though his thoughts 
were not altogether centred upon the motley and ever-moving 
scene around him. He stood in simple and quiet dignity, 
presiding over a large basket of buttercups — early buttercups, 
which, yet moist with the sparkling dews of night, he had 
gathered in the fields or hedge-rows, and brought upon his 
back to the market for sale. 

" Strange merchandise ! " thought I to myself. " Butter- 
cups ! who will be likely to buy buttercups, which anybody 
may go and gather for nothing in the fields ? Surely the old 



BUTTERCUPS IX LOXDOX. 193 

man must be in his dotage ! " And I passed on, not without 
a feeling of compassion for the simplicity of a man of his 
years, who could imagine that he would find a market for 
buttercups in the very centre of civilization and refinement. 
There was something, however, in the vivid flash of the old 
man's eye, as his glance met mine for a moment — and it may 
well be that there was something in the dewy golden bowls of 
the buttercups too — which impressed the spectacle he pre- 
sented upon my memory after I had turned away, and brought 
him at intervals again and again before my mind's eye. 

As I strolled pleasantly among the floral beauties of the 
parterre and the hothouse — the graceful arums, the delicate 
and fragile monthly roses, the modest and luxuriant pansies, and 
the brilliant exotics, which even in early spring render Covent- 
garden the paradise of commerce, the images of the buttercups 
and their grey-haired guardian recurred many times, and ever 
with added force, to my imagination. By-and-by I began to 
doubt whether I had not done the old man an injustice in the 
estimate I had formed of him — whether, in fact, I was not 
myself the simpleton, and he the wiser man of the two. 
" Buttercups ! " I again mentally ejaculated, "what are the 
associations connected with them, and what are the images 
they present to the Londoner pent up in the murky wilder- 
ness of brick ? Is not the buttercup the first flower plucked 
by infant hands from the green bosom of bountiful mother 
earth ? Are not the sweet memories of infancy and child- 
hood, which are the purest poetry of man's troubled life, all 
floating magically in its little golden cup ? Who does not 
remember — and who, remembering, would willingly forget ? — 
his first ecstatic rambles in the yellow fields — yellow with 
buttercups, when he pulled the nodding flowers, and held the 
gleaming calyx beneath his little sister's chin, enraptured at 
the ruddy reflection from the flower; and then, with look 
demure and solemn, submitted his own face to the same 
mysterious experiment ? "WTio does not remember the ravage 



194 CURIOSITIES OF LOXBOX LIFE. 

he committed in the golden meadows, while he was ret a 
tottering plaything hardly higher than the tall grass in which 
he was half-buried, when, had he had bnt the power, he 
would have culled every flower of the field, and garnered them 
tip for treasures ? And. how many thousands and tens of 
thousands are there among the weary workers of London, to 
whom these associations are dearer bv far than any which 
could be called into existence by the most rare and gorgeous 
products of combined art and nature which wealth could 
procure ? 

Simpleton that I was — I had set down a profound practical 
philosopher for a mere dotard. The old man knew the secrets 
of the human heart better than I did.. He was well aware 
that to the industrious country -bred mechanic, caged, perhaps 
for life, in the stony prison of the metropolis, the simple 
flower which brought once more within his dark and smoky 
dwelling the scenes and memories of infancy, would present 
attractions to which a penny would be li°ht indeed in the 
balance; and that he should therefore find patrons and 
purchasers, as long as he could meet with men who had hearts 
in their bosoms and a few penny-pieces in their pockets. 

Tbese were my speculations ; and haying now completely 
altered my opinion of the buttercup-merchant, I resolved, 
before I left the market, to see the patriarch again, in order to 
ascertain, if possible, whether I had at length come to a right 
conclusion with regard to him. A couple of hours had elapsed 
ere I returned to the spot where I had first seen him. He 
had not deserted his post. The sun had risen high, and was 
shining warmly upon his brown face, now animated with a 
look of joyous satisfaction, which I attributed to the success 
of his morning's speculation. His basket — an old wine 
hamper cut down — was empty, and he held out the last 
bunch of buttercups in his hand, and proffered them to me, 
having sold, he said, " three score odd" that morning. 

Whether I bought the last bunch of buttercups it imports 



BUTTERCUPS IN LONDON. 195 

tlie reader nothing to know. I must confess to an affection — 
whether it be disease or not, let the nosologists declare — 
which conjures up visions of hedge-rows sparkling with blos- 
soms, and of embowering shadowy lanes, through gaps in 
which the green fields glimmer brightly. This affection, 
when an attack of it comes on, sometimes leads me to do odd 
things — things far more strange than lugging home a bunch 
of buttercups half as big as my head. Still I am not going 
to confess. I do declare, however, that I was not sorry to 
find that there were so many simpletons to be met with in 
London, before seven o'clock in the morning, as to buy up half 
a hundred weight of buttercups at a penny a bunch. Among 
so many sharp fellows who speculate upon the animal appetites, 
the vices, and the sordid propensities of mankind, it was re- 
freshing to find one who, like the purveyor of buttercups, 
founded his claim to remuneration upon the indwelling poetry 
of human nature, and the love of natural beauties which sur- 
vives in so many persons, debased and tainted, and corrupt 
though they be by temptation and by sin. 



K 2 



196 



THE STREET STATIONER. 



The profession of street stationer is one of comparative novelty, 
and cannot be traced so far back as the advent of Rowland 
Hill with, his f anions system of penny postage, which has 
proved snch a bonns to the nation, and has already gone far to 
add another generic designation to the genus homo, who being 
once described as a cooking animal, may now with nearly 
equal propriety be styled a "corresponding" one. It was the 
increase of correspondence, consequent npon the establishment 
and snccess of the penny postage, and no other canse, that 
called the street stationer into existence, and located him with 
his back to the carriage-way and his feet to the kerb-stone, 
and set him chanting, in a monotonous voice, " Here you are, 
ladies and gen'lmen — best Bath note-paper a penny for a 'ole 
half quire — hangnups three- halfpence a packet, an' sealin'-vax 
a penny a stick." 

This out-of-door trader is generally a shabby and rather 
broken-down specimen of the low-class man- about- town, who 
has lingered and idled and dawdled and hesitated so long in 
the choice of a profession, that it is at length too late to make 
his selection. He has been driven to exertion to satisfy the 
wants of nature, and being constitutionally averse, as well to 
the discipline as the toil of regular labour, he has contrived 
to invest a small capital in a species of property conveniently 
portable, and thrown himself upon the patronage of the pub- 



THE STEEET STATIOXEE. 197 

lie, to whose epistolary wants he dedicates his compelled 
energies. This is all very well so far as it goes ; and we 
might congratulate him, and the community he assumes to 
serve, upon his having at length condescended to get his own 
living in any lawful way, were it not for the fact, that the 
species of industry he has adopted is palpably open to the 
charge of deception and predacity. It happens to be the case 
that, owing to some cause or other very intimately connected 
with the subject of popular education, not one in twenty of 
that class of the London industrials who, when they corre- 
spond at all, may be said to correspond from hand to mouth, 
and who only purchase stationery when they want to write a 
letter, know how many sheets of paper go to a quire. Of 
this state of ignorance the street stationer takes a professional 
advantage, and sells his confiding customers eight sheets 
instead of twelve, under the denomination of " a 'ole half 
quire." As he himself gives eightpence for five quires, to 
sell at a penny the half quire would yield him a profit 
less remunerative than he would relish, and one which per- 
haps he would consider not worth the trouble attending the 
sale : so he divides his quire, as the Irishman divided his 
cheese, into three halves, and thus realizes a profit of nearly 
ninety per cent., three-fourths of which is due to the igno- 
rance of his patrons. His "hangflups," as he calls his 
envelopes, are subjected to a similar process of expansion, 
though they are not susceptible, by any species of manage- 
ment, of such a profitable transformation as that effected by 
bisecting a quire of paper in the mode above described. Of 
these, however, he makes five quarters to the hundred, which 
after all pays handsomely for the trouble of the division. 

Unlike other street traders, who carry a portable stock, and 
wander where they choose at their own sweet will, the 
stationer of the flag- stones finds it as much to his convenience 
as to his interest to confine himself to one locality. Station- 
ery, which derives its designation from being sold by persons 



198 CFHIOSITIES OF LONDOX LIFE. 

who occupied stations, in contradistinction to travelling 
hawkers and pedlars — and which was originally and properly 
spelled stationary — would appear to be a species of merchan- 
dise the sale of which naturally attracts and cultivates a 
connection; and hence it follows that the longer a man remains 
in one place, where the public know where to find him, the 
more he sells, and the more he is likely to sell. This, of 
course, is one reason why the subject of the present sketch is 
found in full voice — though not in full quire — from week to 
week, and from month to month, chanting his delusive notes 
in the self- same spot. Another reason, and one which must 
have considerable weight in determining his choice of a posi- 
tion, will be found in the damageable nature of the com- 
modities in which he deals. He cannot afford to be caught in 
a heavy shower : water would be almost as fatal as ink to the 
delicate gloss of his note-paper; and his "hangflups," which 
wear a very livid appearance, and are but sickly to look at, 
would dissolve into pulp under the pressure of the hydro- 
pathic treatment, in the shape of a summer storm. Hence he 
takes up his stand within a very short distance of some con- 
venient shelter, to which he can repair when a lowering cloud 
threatens to moisten bis merchandise. Whenever vou see him 
harnessed with his little tray, fluttering his pretended half- 
quire in the faces of the passers-by, and hear him pattering 
his never-ending strain in their ears, you may be sure that 
not far off, in some direction or other, there is a dry archway, 
a covered court, or some roomy shelter, where, in company 
with the umbrellaless crowd, he can take his stand in less 
than a minute, should it come on to rain ; and where, too, he 
has an opportunity of prosecuting his commerce among a large 
party whom the shower has brought into temporary com- 
panionship. 

It is but fair to state that some of the members of this 
fraternity approximate rather nearer than the majority of them 
do to a just conception of what is due to the purchaser of a 



THE STREET STATIONER. 199 

half-quire of paper, and give him nine sheets for his penny. 
This is a step in the right direction ; and we are sorry that at 
present we can report no further improvement, and that even 
this small instalment of justice is but partially practised. We 
made the experiment of buying at two or three locations very 
lately, and in no case obtained more than nine sheets for the 
price of twelve. ISTow here is a chance for some enterprising 
genius, if such a character is to be found among all the street 
stationers, to stand forth manfully in the cause of honesty, 
and to earn a character by dispelling the popular hallucination 
on the subject of a quire of paper, in awarding his customers 
the right number of sheets for their money. We venture to 
predict that the first man among them who shall do this will 
find his account in it, and realize, through " small profits and 
quick returns," a larger weekly income than he has averaged 
hitherto by defrauding his patrons to the tune of thirty per 
cent. We promise him moreover that, clever as it may be 
thought to trick the multitude, and sweet as stolen waters 
are, he shall find that the practice of integrity is a policy 
incomparably more profitable, and the crust purchased by an 
honest penny infinitely more sweet and wholesome. 



200 



"WHAT HAS BECOME OE THE PIEMAK ? 



A penny for a pie ! In the records of our individual expe- 
rience, this is probably the most ancient species of barter — the 
first gentle and welcome induction to the dry details of 
commerce, and one eminently calculated to impress upon the 
infant minds of a trading population the primary principles of 
exchange, of which a quid pro quo forms the universal basis. 
"We had imagined, upon the first view of our subject, that the 
fabrication and consumption of pies must have been a custom 
as ancient as cookery itself, and have ranked among the very 
first achievements of the gastronomic art. Upon careful in- 
vestigation, however, we find ourselves to have been mistaken 
in this idea. We have not been able to discover among the 
revelations to which the Eosetta Stone surrendered a key, any 
authority for supposing that among all the butlers and bakers 
of all the Pharaohs, there ever existed one who knew how to 
prepare a pie for the royal banquet. Xo ; it was reserved for 
the Greeks, the masters of civilization and the demigods of 
art, who brought every species of refinement to its highest 
pitch, to acid the invention of pies and pie-crust to the cata- 
logue of their immortal triumphs. Their uproKpeag (the word 
passed unchanged into Eoman use) was an aggregation of 
succulent meats baked in a farinaceous crust, probably some- 
what resembling in form a venison pasty of the present day, 
and was the first combination of the kind, so far at least as we 



WHAT HAS BECOME OF THE PIEMAN? 201 

know, ever submitted to the appetite of the gourmand. We 
have no intention of pursuing the history of this great dis- 
covery from its first dawn in some Athenian kitchen to its 
present universal estimation among all civilized eaters. "We 
must pass the pies of all nations, from the monkey-pie of Cen- 
tral Africa, with the head of the baked semi-homo emerging 
spectrally from the upper-crust, to the pates of Strasburg, the 
abnormally swollen livers of whose tormented geese roam the 
wide world to avenge upon gluttonous man the infamous tor- 
tures inflicted upon their original proprietors : we must pass, 
too, the thousand-and-one ingenious inventions which adorn 
the pages of Messrs. Glass and Eumbold, by means of which 
dyspepsias are produced secundum artem, and the valetudi- 
narian is accustomed to retard his convalescence according to 
the most approved and fashionable mode. The great pie of 
1850, prepared by the ingenious Soyer, at the cost of a hun- 
dred guineas, for the especial delectation of municipal stomachs 
at York, is, likewise, altogether out of our way. Our busi- 
ness is with the pie that is sold for a penny, and sold in 
London. Let us add, moreover, that we treat only of the pie 
which is fairly worth a penny, leaving altogether out of our 
category the flimsy sophistries of your professed confectioner. 
From time immemorial the wandering pieman was a promi- 
nent character in the highways and bywa} T s of London. He 
was generally a merry dog, and was always found where mer- 
riment was going on. [Furnished with a tray about a yard 
square, either carried upon his head or suspended by a strap in 
front of his breast, he scrupled not to force his way through 
the thickest crowd, knowing that the very centre of action was 
the best market for his wares. He was a gambler, both from 
inclination and principle, and would toss with his customers, 
either by the dallying shilli-shally process of "best five in 
nine," the tricksy manoeuvre of " best two in three," or the 
desperate dash of "sudden death!" in which latter case the 
first toss was destiny — a pie for a halfpenny, or your half- 

k 3 



202 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

penny gone for nothing ; but lie invariably declined the mys- 
terious process of "the odd man;" not being altogether free 
from suspicion on the subject of collusion between a couple of 
hungry customers. We meet with him frequently in old 
prints; and in Hogarth's " Harch to Finchley," there he 
stands in the very centre of the crowd, grinning with delight 
at the adroitness of one robbery, while he is himself the vie- 
tim of another. IVe learn from this admirable figure by the 
greatest painter of English life, that the pieman of the last 
century perambulated the streets in professional costume ; and 
we gather further, from the burly dimensions of his wares, 
that he kept his trade alive by the laudable practice of giving 
" a good pennyworth for a penny." Justice compels us to 
observe that his successors of a later generation have not been 
very conscientious observers of this maxim. The varying 
price of flour, alternating with a sliding- scale, probably drove 
some of them to their wit's end ; and perhaps this cause more 
than any other operated in imparting that complexion to their 
productions which made them resemble the dead body of a 
penny pie, and which in due time lost them favour with the 
discerning portion of their customers. Certain it is that the 
perambulating pie business in London fell very much into dis- 
repute arid contempt for several years before the abolition of 
the corn-laws and the advent of free trade. Opprobrious 
epithets were hurled at the wandering merchant as he paraded 
the streets and alleys — epithets which were in no small degree 
justified by the clammy and clay-like appearance of his goods. 
By degrees the profession got into disfavour, and the pieman 
either altogether disappeared, or merged in a dealer in foreign 
nuts, fruits, and other edibles which barred the suspicion of 
sophistication. 

Still the relish for pies survived in the public taste, and the 
willing penny was as ready as ever to guerdon the man who, 
on fair grounds, would meet the general desire. JS"o sooner, 
therefore, was the sliding-scale gone to the dogs, and a fair 



WHAT HAS BECOME OF THE PIE MAX ? 203 

prospect of permanence offered to the speculator, in the 
guarantee of something like a fixed cost in the chief ingredient 
used, than up sprung almost simultaneously in every district of 
the metropolis a new description of pie-shops, which rushed 
at once into popularity and prosperity. Capital had recog- 
nised the leading want of the age, and brought the appliances 
of wealth and energy to supply it. Avoiding, on the one hand, 
the glitter and pretension of the confectioner, and on the other 
the employment of adulterating or inferior materials, they 
produced an article which the populace devoured with uni- 
versal commendation, to the gradual but certain profit of the 
projectors. The peripatetic merchant was pretty generally 
driven out of the field by the superiority of the delicacy with 
which he had to compete. He could not manufacture on a 
small scale in a style to rival his new antagonists, and he 
could not purchase of them to sell again, because they would 
not allow him a living margin — boasting, as it would appear 
with perfect truth, that they sold at a small and infinitesimal 
profit, which would not bear division. 

These penny-pie shops now form one of the characteristic 
features of the London trade in comestibles. That they are 
an immense convenience as well as a luxury to a very large 
section of the population, there can be no doubt. It might be 
imagined, at first view, that they would naturally seek a 
cheap locality and a low rental. This, however, is by no 
means the universal practice. In some of the chief lines of 
route they are to be found in full operation ; and it is rare 
indeed, unless at seasons when the weather is very unfavour- 
able, that they are not seen well filled with customers. They 
abound especially in the immediate neighbourhood of omnibus 
and cab stations, and very much in the thoroughfares and 
short-cuts most frequented by the middle and lower classes. 
But though the window may be of plate -glass, behind which 
piles of the finest fruit, joints, and quarters of the best meat, 
a large clish of silver eels, and a portly china bowl charged 



204 CURIOSITIES OE LO^DOX LIEE. 

with, a liberal heap of minced -meat, with here and there a 
few pies, lie temptingly arranged upon napkins of snowy 
whiteness, yet there is not a chair, stool, or seat of any kind 
to be fonnd within. No dallying is looked for, nor wonld it 
probably be allowed. "Pay for your pie, and go," seems the 
order of the day. True, you may eat it there, as thousands 
do ; but you must eat it standing, and clear of the counter. 
"We have more than once witnessed this interesting operation 
with mingled mirth and satisfaction ; nay, what do we care ? 
— take the confession for what it is worth — pars ipsi fuimus 
— we have eaten our pies (and paid for them too, no credit 
being given) — in loco, and are therefore in a condition to 
guarantee the truth of what we record. With few exceptions 
(we include ourselves among the number), there are no theo- 
retical philosophers among the frequenters of the penny-pie 
shop. The philosophy of bun-eating may be very profound, 
and may present, as we think it does, some difficult points ; 
but the philosophy of penny-pie eating is absolutely next to 
nil. The customer of the pie-shop is a man (if he is not a 
boy) with whom a penny is a penny, and a pie is a pie, who, 
when he has the former to spend or the latter to eat, goes 
through the ceremony like one impressed with the settled 
conviction that he has business in hand which it behoves him 
to attend to. Look at him as he stands in the centre of the 
floor, erect as a grenadier, turning his busy mouth full upon 
the living tide that rushes along Holborn ! Of shame or con- 
fusion of face in connection with the enviable position in 
which he stands he has not the remotest conception, and could 
as soon be brought to comprehend the differential calculus as to 
entertain a thought of it. What, we ask, would philosophy 
do for him ? Still every customer is not so happily organised, 
and so blissfully insensible to the attacks of false shame ; and 
for such as are unprepared for the public gaze, or constitu- 
tionally averse from it, a benevolent provision is made by a 
score of old play-bills stuck against the adverse wall, or 



WHAT HAS BECOME OF THE PIEMAN? 205 

swathing the sacks of flour which stand ready for use, and 
which they may peruse, or affect to peruse, in silence, 
munching their pennyworths the while. The main body of 
the pie- eaters are, however, perfectly at their ease, and pass 
the very few minutes necessary for the discussion of their 
purchases in bandying compliments with three or four good- 
looking lasses, the very incarnations of good-temper and 
cleanly tidiness, who from morn to night are as busy as bees 
in extricating the pies from their metallic moulds, as they are 
demanded by the customers. These assistants lead no lazy 
life, but they are without exception plump and healthy- 
looking, and would seem (if we are to believe the report of 
an employer) to have an astonishing tendency to the parish 
church of the district in which they officiate, our informant 
having been bereaved of three by marriage in the short space 
of six months. Belays are necessary in most establishments 
on the main routes, as the shops are open all night long, 
seldom closing much before three in the morning when situ- 
ated in the neighbourhood of a theatre or a cab-stand. Of 
the amount of business done in the course of a year it is not 
easy to form an estimate. Some pie-houses are known to 
consume as much flour as a neighbouring baker standing in 
the same track. The baker makes ninety quartern loaves 
from the sack of flour, and could hardly make a living upon 
less than a dozen sacks a week ; but as the proportion borne 
by the crust of a penny-pie to a quartern loaf is a mystery 
which we have not yet succeeded in penetrating, we are 
wanting in the elements of an exact calculation. 

The establishment of these shops has by degrees prodi- 
giously increased the number of pie-eaters and the consump- 
tion of pies. Thousands and tens of thousands who would 
decline the handling of a scalding hot morsel in the public 
street, will yet steal to the corner of a shop, and in front of 
an old play-bill, delicately dandling the titbit on their finger- 
tips till it cools to the precise temperature at which it is so 



206 CUKIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

delicious to swallow — " snatch a fearful joy." The trades- 
man, too, in the immediate vicinit} r , soon learns to appreciate 
the propinquity of the pie-shop, in the addition it furnishes 
to a cold dinner, and for half the sum it would have cost him 
if prepared in his own kitchen. Many a time and oft have 
we dropped in, upon the strength of a general invitation, at 
the dinner- table of an indulgent bibliopole, and recognised 
the undeniable pates of " over the way" following upon the 
heels of the cold sirloin. With artisans out of work, and 
with town-travellers of small trade, the pie-shop is a halting- 
place, its productions presenting a cheap substitute for a 
dinner. Few purchases are made before twelve o'clock in 
the day; in fact the shutters are rarely pulled down much 
before eleven ; yet even then business is carried on for nearly 
twenty hours out of the twenty-four. About noon the cur- 
rent of custom sets in, and all hands are busy till four or five 
o'clock; after which there is a pause, or rather a relaxation, 
until evening, when the various bands of operatives, as they 
are successively released from work, again renew the tide. 
As these disappear, the numberless nightly exhibitions, lec- 
ture-rooms, mechanics' institutes, concerts, theatres and 
casinos, pour forth their motley hordes, of whom a large 
dnd hungry section find their way to the pie-house as the 
only available resource — the public-houses being shut up 
for the night, and the lobster-rooms, oyster saloons, "shades," 
" coal-holes," and "cider-cellars," too expensive for the 
means of the multitude. After these come the cab-drivers, 
who, having conveyed to their homes the more moneyed 
classes of sight- seers and playgoers, return to their stands 
in the vicinity of the shop, and now consider that they may 
conscientiously indulge in a refreshment of eel-pies, winding 
up with a couple of "fruiters," to the amount at least of the 
sum of which they may have been able to cheat their fares. 

Throughout the summer months the pie trade flourishes 
with unabated vigour. Each successive fruit, as it ripens and 



WHAT HAS BECOME OE THE PIEMAN? 207 

comes to market, adds a fresh impetus to the traffic. As 
autumn waxes, every week supplies a new attraction and a 
delicious variety; as it wanes into winter, good store of 
apples are laid up for future use ; and so soon as Jack Erost 
sets his cold toes upon the pavement, the delicate odour of 
mince-meat assails the passer-by, and reminds him that 
Christmas is coming, and that the pieman is ready for him. 
It is only in the early spring that the pie -shop is under a 
temporary cloud. The apples of the past year are well nigh 
gone, and the few that remain have lost their succulence, and 
are dry and flavourless. This is the precise season when, as 
the pieman in " Pickwick" too candidly observed, "fruits is 
out, and cats is in." JNow there is an unaccountable preju- 
dice against cats among the pie-devouring population of the 
metropolis ; we are superior to it ourselves, and can therefore 
afford to mention it dispassionately, and to express our regret 
that any species of commerce, much more one so grateful to 
the palate, and so convenient to the purse, should periodically 
suffer declension through the prevalence of an unfounded pre- 
judice. Certain it is that penny-pie eating does materially 
decline about the early spring season ; and it is certain too 
that, of late years, about the same season, a succession of fine 
Tabbies of our own have mysteriously disappeared. Attempts 
are made with rhubarb to combat the depression of business ; 
but success in this matter is very partial — the generality of 
consumers being impressed with the popular notion that 
rhubarb is physic, and that physic is not fruit. But relief 
is at hand; the showers and sunshine of May bring the 
gooseberry to market ; pies resume their importance ; and 
the pieman, backed by an inexhaustible store of a fruit grate- 
ful to every English palate, commences the campaign with 
renewed energy, and bids defiance for the rest of the year to 
the mutations of fortune. 

"We shall close this sketch with a legend of the day, for the 
truth of which, however, we do not personally vouch. It 



208 CrRIOSITIES OF loxdox life. 

was related and received with much gusto at an annual 
supper lately given by a large pie proprietor to his assembled 
hands : — 

Some time since, so runs the current narrative, the owner 
of a thriving mutton-pie concern, which, after much difficulty, 
he had succeeded in establishing with borrowed capital, died 
before he had well extricated himself from the responsibi- 
lities of debt. The widow carried on the business after his 
decease, and throve so well, that a speculating baker on the 
opposite side of the way made her the offer of his hand. 
The lady refused, and the enraged suitor, determined on 
revenge, immediately converted his baking into an opposition 
pie- shop ; and acting on the principle universal among Lon- 
don bakers, of doing business for the first month or two at a 
loss, made his pies twice as big as he could honestly afford to 
make them. The consequence was that the widow lost her 
custom, and was hastening fast to ruin, when a friend of her 
late husband, who was also a small creditor, paid her a visit. 
She detailed her grievance to him, and lamented her lost 
trade and fearful prospects. "Ho, ho!" said her friend, 
"'that 'ere's the move, is it ? Never you mind, my dear. If 
I don't git your trade agin, there aint no snakes, mark me — 
that's all !" So saying he took his leave. 

About eight o'clock the same evening, when the baker's 
new pie- shop was crammed to overflowing, and the principal 
was below superintending the production of a new batch, in 
walks the widow's friend in the costume of a kennel-raker, 
and elbowing his way to the counter, dabs down upon it a 
brace of hu^e dead cats, vociferating at the same time to the 
astonished damsel in attendance ; " Tell your master, my dear, 
as how them two makes six- and- thirty this week, and say 
I'll brins: t'other four to-morrer artemoon ! " TTith that he 
swaggered out and went his way. So powerful was the pre- 
judice against cat-mutton among the population of that 
neighbourhood, that the shop was clear in an instant, and 



WHAT HAS BECOME OE THE PIEMAN ? 209 

the floor was seen covered with hastily-abandoned specimens 
of every variety of segments of a circle. The spirit- shop at 
the corner of the street experienced an unusually large de- 
mand for " goes " of brandy, and interjectional ejaculations 
not purely grammatical were not merely audible, but visible 
too in the district. It is averred that the ingenious expedient 
of the widow's friend, founded as it was upon a profound 
knowledge of human prejudices, had the desired effect of 
restoring " the balance of trade." The widow recovered her 
commerce; the resentful baker was done as brown as if he 
had been shut up in his own oven ; and the friend who 
brought about this measure of justice received the hand of 
the lady as a reward for his interference. 



210 



BLIGHTED FLOWERS. 



The facts of the following brief narrative, which are very few 
and of but melancholy interest, became known to me in the 
precise order in which they are laid before the reader. They 
were forced upon my observation rather than sought out by 
me ; and they present, to my mind at least, a touching picture 
of the bitter conflict industrious poverty is sometimes called 
upon to wage with " the thousand natural shocks which flesh 
is heir to." 

It must be now eight or nine years since, in traversing a 
certain street, which runs for nearly half a mile in a direct 

line southward, I first encountered Ellen . She was 

then a fair young girl of seventeen, rather above the middle 
size, and with a queen-like air and gait which made her appear 
taller than she really was. Her countenance, pale but healthy, 
and of a perfectly regular and classic mould, was charming to 
look upon from its undefinable expression of lovableness and 
sweet temper. Her tiny feet tripped noiselessly along the 
pavement, and a glance from her black eye sometimes met 
mine like a ray of light, as, punctually at twenty minutes to 

nine, we passed each other near House, each of us on 

our way to the theatre of our daily operations. She was an 
embroideress, as I soon discovered from a small stretching- frame, 
containing some unfinished work, which she occasionally car- 
ried in her hand. She set me a worthy example of punctuality, 



BLIGHTED ELOWEES. 211 

and I could any day have told the time to a minute without 
looking at my watch, by marking the spot where we passed 
each other. I learned to look for her regularly, and before I 
knew her name, had given her that of "Minerva," in acknow- 
ledgment of her efficiency as a Mentor. 

A year after the commencement of our acquaintance, which 
never ripened into speech, happening to set out from home one 
morning a quarter of an hour before my usual time, I made the 
pleasing discovery that my juvenile Minerva had a younger 
sister, if possible still more beautiful than herself. The pair 
were taking an affectionate leave of each other at the crossing 
of the New Road, and the silver accents of the younger as, 
kissing her sister, she laughed out, " Good-by, Ellen," gave 
me the first information of the real name of my pretty Mentor. 
The little Mary — for so was the younger called, who could not 
be more than eleven years of age — was a slender, frolicsome 
sylph, with a skin of the purest carnation, and a face like that 
of Sir Joshua's seraph in the National Gallery, but with larger 
orbs and longer lashes shading them. As she danced and leaped 
before me on her way home again, I could not but admire the 
natural ease and grace of every motion, nor fail to comprehend 
and sympathise with the anxious looks of the sisters' only 
parent, their widowed mother, who stood watching the return 
of the younger darling at the door of a very humble two- story 
dwelling, in the vicinity of the New River Head. 

Nearly two years passed away, during which, with the ex- 
ception of Sundays and holidays, every recurring morning 
brought me the grateful though momentary vision of one or 
both of the charming sisters. Then came an additional pleasure 
— I met them both together every day. The younger had 
commenced practising the same delicate and ingenious craft of 
embroidery, and the two pursued their industry in company 
under the same employer. It was amusing to mark the de- 
mure assumption of womanhood darkening the brows of the 
aerial little sprite, as, with all the new-born consequence of 



212 CFEIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

responsibility, she walked soberly by her sister's side, frame in 
hand, and occasionally revealed to passers-by a brief glimpse 
of her many- coloured handiwork. They were the very picture 
of beauty and happiness, and happy beyond question must their 
innocent lives have been for many pleasant months. But soon 
the shadows of care began to steal over their hitherto joyous 
faces, and traces of anxiety, perhaps of tears, to be too plainly 
visible on their paling cheeks. All at once I missed them in 
my morning's walk, and for several days — it might be weeks 
— saw nothing of them. I was at length startled from my 
forgetfulness of their very existence by the sudden apparition 
of both one Alonday morning clad in the deepest mourning. 
I saw the truth at once ; the mother, who, I had remarked, 
was prematurely old and feeble, was gone, and the two orphan 
children were left to battle it with the world. 2\L\ conjecture 
was the truth, as a neighbour of whom I made some inquiries 
on the subject was not slow to inform me. "Ah, sir," said 

the good woman, " poor ^Irs. D have had a hard time of 

it, and she born an' bred a gentle oom an." 

I asked her if the daughters were provided for. 

" Indeed, sir," continued my informant, "I'm afeard not. 
'Twas the most unfortnatest thing in the world, sir, poor Mr. 

D 's dying jest as a' did. You see, sir, he war a soldier, 

a fightin' out in Indy, and his poor wife lef at home wi' them 
two blossoms o' gals. He warn't what you call a common soldier, 
sir, but some kind o' officer like ; an' in some great battle fought 
seven year agone he done fine service I've heerd, and promo- 
tion was sent out to 'un, but didn't get there till the poor man 
was dead of his wounds. The news of he's death cut up his 
poor wife complete, and she han't been herself since. I've 
know'd she wasn't long for here ever since it come. AYust of 
all, it seems that because the poor man was dead the very day 
the promotion reached 'un, a' didn't die a captain after all, and 
so the poor widder didn't get no pension. How they've a' 
managed to live is more than I can tell. The oldest gal is very 



BLIGHTED EL0WEES. 213 

clever, they say ; but Lor' bless 'ee ! ' taint much to s'port 
three as is to be got out o' broiderin'." 

Thus enlightened on the subject of their private history, it 
was with very different feelings I afterwards regarded these 
unfortunate children. Bereft of both parents, and cast upon a 
world with the ways of which they were utterly unacquainted, 
and in which they might be doomed to the most painful 
struggles, even to procure a bare subsistence, one treasure was 
yet left them — it was the treasure of each other's love. So 
far as the depth of this feeling could be estimated from the 
looks and actions of both, it was all in all to each. But the 
sacred bond that bound them was destined to be rudely rent 
asunder. The cold winds of autumn began to visit too 
roughly the fair pale face of the younger girl, and the un- 
mistakeabie indications of consumption made their appearance : 
the harrassing cough, the hectic cheek, the deep -settled pain 
in the side, the failing breath. Against these dread fore- 
runners it was vain long to contend ; and the poor child had 
to remain at home in her solitary sick- chamber, while the 
loving sister toiled harder than ever to provide, if possible, the 
means of comfort and restoration to health. All the world 
knows the ending of such a hopeless strife as this. It is 
sometimes the will of heaven that the path of virtue, like that 
of glory, leads but to the grave. So it was in the present in- 
stance : the blossom of this fair young life withered away, 
and the grass-fringed lips of the child's early tomb closed over 
the lifeless relics ere spring had dawned upon the year. 

Sorrow had graven legible traces upon the brow of my hap- 
less Hentor when I saw her again. How different now was 
the vision that greeted my daily sight from that of former 
years ! The want that admits not of idle wailing compelled 
her still to pursue her daily course of labour, and she pursued 
it with the same constancy and punctuality as she had ever 
done. But the exquisitely chiselled face, the majestic gait, 
the elastic step — the beauty and glory of youth, unshaken 



214 CURIOSITIES OE LOXDOX LIEE. 

because unassaulted by death and sorrow — where were they? 
Alas ! all the bewitching charms of her former being had gone 
down into the grave of her mother and sister ; and she, 
their support and idol, seemed no more now than she really 
was — a wayworn, solitary, and isolated straggler for daily 
bread. 

Were this a fiction that I am writing, it would be an easy 
matter to deal out a measure of poetical justice, and to recom- 
pense poor Ellen for all her industry, self-denial, and suffering 
in the arms of a husband, who should possess as many and 
great virtues as herself, and an ample fortune to boot. I wish 
with all mv heart that it were a fiction, and that Providence 
had never furnished me with such a seeming anomaly to add 
to the list of my desultory chronicles. Eut I am telling a 
true story of a life. Ellen found no mate. jSTo mate, did I 
say ? Yes, one : the same grim yoke-fellow whose delight it 
is to " gather roses in the spring," paid ghastly court to her 
faded charms, and won her — who shall say an unwilling 
bride ? I could see his gradual but deadly advances in my 
daily walks : the same indications that gave warning of the 
sister's fate admonished me that she also was on her way to 
the tomb, and that the place that had known her would soon 
know her no more. She grew day by day more feeble ; and 
one morning I found her seated on the step of a door, unable 
to proceed. After that she disappeared from my view ; and 
though I never saw her again at the old spot, I have seldom 
passed that spot since, though for many years following the 
same route, without recognising again in my mind's eye the 
graceful form and angel aspect of Ellen D . 

"And is this the end of your mournful history ?" some 
querulous reader demands. JSTot quite. There is a soul of 
good in things evil. Compassion dwells with the depths of 
misery ; and in the valley of the shadow of death dove-eyed 
Charity walks with shining wings. .... It was nearly 
two months after I had lost sight of poor Ellen, that during 



BLIGHTED FLOWEES. 215 

one of my dinner-hour perambulations about town, I looked 
in almost accidentally upon my old friend and chum, Jack 

"YV" .. Jack keeps a perfumer's shop not a hundred miles 

from Gray's Inn, where, ensconced up to his eyes in delicate 
odours, he passes his leisure hours — the hours when com- 
merce nags, and people have more pressing affairs to attend to 
than the delectation of their nostrils — in the enthusiastic 
study of art and vertu. His shop is hardly more crammed 
with bottles and attar, soaps, scents, and all the etceteras of the 
toilet, than the rest of his house with prints, pictures, 
carvings, and curiosities of every sort. Jack and I went to 
school together, and sowed our slender crop of wild oats 
together ; and, indeed, in some sort have been together 
ever since. We both have our own collections of rarities, 
such as they are, and each criticises the other's new pur- 
chases. On the present occasion there was a new Yan 
Somebody's old painting awaiting my judgment- and no 
sooner did my shadow darken his door, than starting from his 
lair, and bidding the boy ring the hell should he be wanted, 
he bustled me upstairs, calling by the way to his house- 
keeper, Mrs. Jones — Jack is a bachelor — to bring up coffee 
for two. I was prepared to pronounce my dictum on his 
newly-acquired treasure, and was going to bounce uncere- 
moniously into the old lumber-room over the lobby to regale 
my sight with the delightful confusion of his unarranged ac- 
cumulations when he pulled me forcibly back by the coat- 
tail. "Not there," said Jack \ li you can't go there. Go into 
my snuggery." 

"And why not there ?' ; said I ; jealous of some new pur- 
chase which I was not to see. 

" Because there's somebody ill there- — it is a bedroom now : 
a poor girl ; she wanted a place to die in, poor thing ; and I 
put her in there. " 

" Who is she ? — a relative r" 

" No ; I never saw her till Monday last. Sit down, I'll 
tell you how it was. Set down the coffee, Mrs. Jones, and 



216 CUEIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

just look in upon the patient, will you ? Sugar and cream ? 
You know my weakness for the dead wall in Lincoln's Inn 
Eields." (Jack never refuses a beggar backed by that wall, 
for the love of Ben Jonson, who, he devoutly believes, had a 
hand in building it.) u Well, I met with her there on ITonday 
last. She asked for nothing, but held out her hand, and as 
she did so the tears streamed from her eyes on the pavement. 
The poor creature, it was plain enough, was then dying ; and 
I told her so. She said she knew it, but had no place to die 
in but the parish workhouse, and hoped that I would not send 
her there. What's the use of talking ? I brought her here, 
and put her to sleep on the sofa, while Jones cleared out the 

lumber-room and got up a bed. I sent for Dr. H to look 

at her ; he gave her a week or ten days at the farthest : I 

don't think she'll last so long. The curate of St. comes 

every day to see her, and I like to talk to her myself some- 
times. "Well, Mrs. Jones, how goes she on ?" 

" She's asleep," said the housekeeper. " Would you like 
to look at her, gentlemen ? " 

We entered the room together, It was as some unac- 
countable presentiment had forewarned me : there, upon a 
snow-white sheet, and pillowed by my friend's favourite 

eider-down squab, lay the wasted form of Ellen D . She 

slept soundly and breathed loudly ; and Dr. H , who en- 
tered while we stood at the bedside, informed us that in all 
probability she would awake only to die, or if to sleep again 
then to wake no more. The latter was the true prophecy. 
She awoke an hour or two after my departure, and passed 
away that same night in a quiet slumber without a pang. 

I never learned by what chain of circumstances she was 
driven to seek alms in the public streets. I might have done 
so perhaps by inquiry, but to what purpose ? She died in 
peace, with friendly hands and friendly hearts near her, and 
Jack buried her in his own grave in Highgate Cemetery, at 
his own expense ; and declares he is none the worse for it. I 
am of his opinion. 



217 



THE DEPLORABLE LODGE. 



Curled up under the shelter of one of the numerous dead 
walls to be met with in the line of the New Koad, from Pad- 
dington to King's Cross, there is to be occasionally seen a 
lump of unwashed and unkempt shivering juvenility and tat- 
tered raggedness. A coarse canvas suit, which would not 
fetch two-pence at the rag shop, and which is full of holes 
and rents, does not more than half cover the naked limbs ; the 
unclean skin, " goose-fleshed " with the wintry blast of Feb- 
ruary, looks pallidly through a dozen patchwork apertures. 
His bare head is protected from the sun and rain only by a mass 
of tangled and dishevelled hair, which drips like thatch when 
the rain beats over it. The owner of the miserable garments, 
which barely serve the purposes of decency, can boast of 
neither shirt, nor stockings, nor shoes. He has huddled him- 
self up almost to the form of a crouching cur that shrinks 
from the assaults of the storm, and he half hides his face in 
his hands as he cowers ruefully from the cold. On the shin 
of one leg, too, a little above the ankle, there is a bad, un- 
sightly wound. On a smooth pavement stone at his side, first 
industriously cleaned and polished with the palm of his hand, 
he has written in white chalk, shaded with a black Italian 
crayon, and in characters to the beauty and flourishing fluency 

L 



218 CTEJOSITIES OE LONDON LIFE. 

of which the italics we are compelled to make use of have 
no pretensions, the following expressive appeal : — 

"I will not steal — 
I must not beg — 
I cannot work — 
Will you allow me to starve 1 " 

A crowd of gaping boys and compassionating females have 
gathered round him. The boys are unanimous and loud in 
their praise of the marvellous writing, which in a measure 
justifies their assertion that it is "better than copper-plate; ' 
the women, with sundry ejaculations of pity and condolence, 
mingled with violent indignation against the world of wealth 
for not stepping forth in a body to the rescue, are searching 
in their pockets for an alms for the suffering creature. JSTow 
and then a passing pedestrian throws him a coin and hurries 
on; and now, the poor women, having succeeded in extract- 
ing a few half-pence from the recesses of their pockets and 
clubbed them together, one of them stoops down tenderly, 
and, with a sigh and a blessing, confers upon the starving 
wretch their united contribution. The grateful creature turns 
a tearful eye to the clouds, and, impressed with the burden of 
thankfulness, invokes a thousand benedictions upon their chari- 
table hearts. Sober citizens, not altogether free from suspi- 
cion, walk past quietly, and take no notice of the appeal to 
their sympathies ; while the man of the world, conversant 
with the whole economy of the business, hurls him an 
admonition or a reproach, instead of a coin, by which pro- 
ceeding the deplorable object in all probability profits more 
than he would have done by their pence, through the gene- 
rosity of the ignorant and the charitable, which is always 
stimulated by the appearance of inhumanity or oppression. 

This unfortunate outcast crouches all day in the eye of the 
public ; and if his wants be still unsatisfied, he lights a can- 



THE DEPLOKABLE DODGE. 219 

die so soon as it is dark, and- then presents quite a picturesque 
object. By the light of his guttering tallow, those who pass 
may read his lithographic performance ; and he will remain at 
his post till seven o'clock at least, to catch the commercial 
gentlemen on their return home after the labours of the count- 
ing-house. So soon as that daily current has subsided, con- 
sidering his business done for the day, he rises from his lair, 
and, treading out his ornamental inscription with his foot, 
limps away with the gait of a confirmed and incurable 
cripple from the scene of his labours — if labours they are 
to be called. 

The subject whom we have been rapidly contemplating is 
well known in certain localities as an arrant impostor. We 
have seen him in the exercise of his daily profession, or we 
should say one of his professions — that of "The Deplorable 
Object, " in the pursuit of which he enjoys a reputation, and 
a profit, too, equal to those of any of his tribe. It may be 
as well, perhaps, to look at the other side of the picture, and 
see how he indemnifies himself at night for his couch of cold 
stone during eight or nine hours of the day. Let us follow 
him home. He has blown out his candle and hidden it in a 
hole in the wall above his head, where he will find it again 
whenever it may be convenient to repeat his performance. 
He hobbles on painfully for a few hundred yards, when, turn- 
ing suddenly southwards, he sets his face towards "Westmin- 
ster, and breaks into a strapping pace, which will carry him 
thither in five-and-thirty minutes. He stops, after a smart 
walk of a few hundred yards, under the shadow of a door- 
way, and putting his wounded foot upon the step, carefully 
detaches the wound — which is a clever work of art — from 
his leg, and as it cost him three-and -sixpence, he folds it up 
for future use. He now resumes his pace, nor stops again 
till, after threading numberless windings and short cuts, he 
pulls up at a favourite wine-vaults in Seven Dials. Here he 

l 2 



220 CURIOSITIES OE LONDON LIFE. 

compensates himself for the hardships of his peculiar craft, 
with libations of some favourite beverage, and afterwards 
dines as luxuriously as a lord, and at the same hour — as he 
is wont to boast — at some "ken" in the immediate neigh- 
bourhood, in the company of a congenial crew of impostors 
who, like himself, make a living by preying on the misdirected 
sympathies of the humane. 

"What he does with himself after dinner depends entirely 
upon the state of trade during the day. On this occasion he 
has been rather successful, and having six or seven shillings in 
his pocket after his dinner is paid for, he resolves upon a little 
relaxation. He walks leisurely home to his lodgings, not a 
very great distance from the Broadway at "Westminster, where, 
doffing his professional garb, he dons one of good serviceable 
fustian, and, having given a peremptory order for supper at 
twelve o'clock, makes one in a party for some low theatre in 
the neighbourhood, where he makes amends for the taciturn- 
ity of his performance in the daytime by the volubility of 
his criticisms. After the performance is over, he and his 
companions resort to the populous beggars' lodging-house 
where they all reside, to a midnight supper, made up of the 
most heterogeneous materials — from charity crusts and pota- 
toes for those who can pay for nothing better, to roast beef, 
or fowls, or rump steaks and oyster sauce, for those who during 
the day have reaped the favours of fortune. Supper over, the 
weary and the penniless slink off to bed, and the rest pro- 
long the repast, in which our hero cuts a conspicuous figure, 
from the excellence of his voice, the vigour of his lungs, and 
the comic humour he brings into play, when he favours the 
company with a specimen of the peculiar class of minstrelsy 
in which they delight. The doors are closed, and no intrusive 
policeman presumes to interrupt their harmony, which gene- 
rally endures so long as anything remains to be spent. If half 
of the wretched objects finish by disgusting intoxication, they 



THE DEPLORABLE DODGE. 221 

are but so much the more fitted for business next day, seeing 
that the tremor and pallor superinduced by debauch may be 
looked upon as the legitimate qualifications for their line of 
occupation. 

The subject of our notice is really a clever fellow, and his 
boast, that he " knows a thing or two," is by no means void 
of truth ; but there is one thing which he does not know, and 
of which at present it would be very difficult to convince him 
— and that is, that of all the victims of his imposture, he is 
himself the one most deplorably deluded. 



222 



A HALF-PENJmVOKTH OE NAVIGATION. 



"Who's for a cheap ride on what a pleasant writer calls the 
" silent highway ?" — silent no longer, since the steamers have 
taken to plying above Bridge at a charge which has made the 
surface of the Thames, where it runs through the heart of 
London, popnlons with life, and noisy with the clash of pad- 
dles and the rush of steam, to say nothing of the incessant 
chorus of captains, engine-boys, and gangway-men — with 
their " Ease her," "Stop her," "Back her," "Turn ahead," 
" Turn astarn," "Now, marm, with the bundle, be alive," 
" Heave ahead there, will you ?" &c, all the day long. 

Come this way, my friend; here we are opposite the 
Adelphi Theatre, and this is the man who used to be a black 
man, or else it's another, who does duty as talking finger-post, 
and shows you, if you are a stranger, how you are to get at the 
half-penny boat. Come, we must dive down this narrow lane, 
past the "Eox under the Hill," a rather long and not very 
sightly, cleanly, smooth, or fragrant thoroughfare ; and here, 
in this shed-looking office, you must pay your half-penny, 
which guarantees you a passage all the way to London Bridge. 
Look alive ! as the money- taker recommends — the Bee, you 
see, is already discharging her living cargo, and others are 
hurrying on board. The boat wont lose time in turning round 
— she goes backwards and forwards as straight as a saw, and 
carries a rudder at her nose as well as one at her tail. Never 



A HALF-PENNYWOETH OF NAVIGATION. 223 

mind these jolting planks, you havn't time to tumble down — 
on with you ! That's it : here, on this floating-pier, manu- 
factured from old barges, we may rest a moment, while the 
boat discharges her freight, and takes on board the return 
cargo. You see the landing-stage or pier is divided into two 
equal portions ; the people who are leaving the boat have not 
yet paid their fare ; they will have to disburse their coppers at 
the office where we paid ours, there being but one paying-place 
for the two termini. 

'Tis a motley company, you see, which comes and goes by 
the half-penny boat. Here is a Temple barrister, with his 
red-taped brief under his arm, and at his heels follows a plas- 
terer, and a tiler's labourer with a six-foot chimney-pot upon 
his shoulders. There goes a foreigner — foreigners like to 
have things cheap — with a bushy black beard and a pale face, 
moustached and whiskered to the eyes, and puffing a volume 
of smoke from his invisible mouth ; and there is a washer- 
woman, with a basket of clothes weighing a hundredweight. 
Yonder young fellow, with the dripping sack on his back, is 
staggering under a load of oysters from Billingsgate, and he 
has got to wash them and sell them for three a penny, and see 
them swallowed one at a time, before his work will be done 
for the day — and behind him is a comely lassie, with a mon- 
ster oil-glazed sarcophagus-looking milliner's basket, carrying 
home a couple of bonnets to a customer. See ! there is lame 
Jack, who sweeps the crossing in the borough, followed by a 
lady with her " six years' darling of a pigmy size," whom she 
calls " Little Popps," both hurrying home to dinner after a 
morning's shopping. All these, and a hundred others of 
equally varied description, go off on the landing-stage, whence 
they will have to pay their obolus to the Charon of the Thames 
ere they are swallowed up in the living tide that rolls along 
the Strand from morn to night. 

Now if we mean to go, we had better get on board, for in 
another minute the deck will be covered, and we shall not find 



224 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

room to stand. That's right ; make sure of a seat while you 
may ! How they swarm on board, and what a choice sample 
they present of the mixed multitude of London ! The deck is 
literally jammed with every variety of the pedestrian popu- 
lation — red-breasted soldiers from the barracks, glazed-hatted 
policemen from the station, Irish labourers and their wives, 
errand-boys with notes and packages, orange-girls with empty 
baskets, working-men out for a mouthful of air, and idle boys 
out for a " spree" — men with burdens to carry, and men with 
hardly a rag to cover them ; unctuous Jews, jabbering French- 
men, and drowsy-looking Germans — on they flock, squeezing 
through the gangway, or clambering over the bulwarks, while 
the little vessel rolls and lurches till the water laves the planks 
on which you stand. In three minutes from her arrival she 
has discharged her old cargo, and is crammed to overflowing 
with a new one. " Back, there : overloaded already !" roars 
the captain. " Let go ; turn ahead ; go on !" — and fiz ! away 
we go, leaving full half of the intending voyagers to wait for 
the next boat, which, however, will not belong in coming. 

"Bless me, how we roll about from side to side !" says an 
anxious old lady. " Is anything the matter with the boat, 
that it wabbles so ?" 

" Only a little krank, marm ; it's all right," says the person 
addressed. 

"It's all right, of course," says another, glancing at the 
nervous lady, " whether we goes up or whether we goes down, 
so long as we gets along. The Cricket blowed herself up, and 
the Ant got tired on it, and laid down to rest herself at the 
bottom t'other day. Howasever, a steamer never blows up 
nor goes to the bottom but once ; and, please God, 't aint 
goin' to be this time." 

While the old lady, unsatisfied with this genuine specimen 
of Cockney philosophy, is vowing that if she once gets safe on 
shore she will never again set foot in a half-penny boat, we 
are already at Waterloo Bridge. Duck goes the runnel, and 



A HALF-PENtfYWORTH OF NAVIGATION". 225 

we dart under the noble arch, and catch a passing view of 
Somerset House. The handsome structure runs away in our 
rear ; the Chinese Junk, with its tawdry flags, scuttles after 
it ; we catch a momentary glimpse of Temple Gardens, lying 
in the sunlight, where half-a-dozen children are playing on 
the grass ; then comes "Whitefriars, the old Alsatia, the sanc- 
tuary of blackguard ruffianism in bygone times ; then there is 
a smell of gas, and a vision of enormous gasometers ; and then 
down goes the funnel again, and Blackfriars Bridge jumps over 
us. On we go, now at the top of our speed, past the dingy 
brick v/arehouses that lie under the shadow of St. Paul's, whose 
black dome looks down upon us as we scud along. Then 
Southwark Bridge, with its Cyclopean masses of gloomy metal, 
disdains to return the slightest response to the fussy splashing 
we make, as we shoot impudently through. Then come more 
wharfs and warehouses, as we glide past, while our pace 
slackens, and we stop gently within a stone's throw of London 
Bridge, at Dyers' Hall, where we are bundled out of the boat 
with as little ceremony as we were bundled in, and witli as 
little, indeed, as it has ever been the custom to use since cere- 
mony was invented — which, in matters of business, is a very 
useless thing. 

And now, my friend, you have accomplished a half-penny 
voyage ; and without being a conjuror, you can see how it is 
that this cheap navigation is so much encouraged. In the 
first place, it is cheaper than shoe-leather, leaving fatigue out 
of the question ; it saves a good two miles of walking, and 
that is no trifle, especially under a heavy burden, or in slippery- 
weather. In the second place, it may be said to be often 
cheaper than dirt, seeing that the soil and injury to clothing, 
which it saves by avoiding a two miles' scamper through the 
muddy ways, would damage the purse of a decent man more 
than would the cost of several journeys. These are consider- 
ations which the humbler classes appreciate, and therefore they 
flock to the cheap boats, and spend their half-pence to save their 

l 3 



226 CTJEI0S1TIES OF LONDON LITE. 

pence and their time. This latter consideration of time-saying 
it is that brings another class of customers to the boats. In 
order that it may be remunerative to the projectors, every 
passage must be made with a regular and undeviating rapidity ; 
and this very necessity becomes in its turn a source of profit, 
because it is a recommendation to a better class of business 
men and commercial agents, to whom a saving of time is daily 
a matter of the utmost importance. Hence the motley mix- 
ture of all ranks and orders that crowd the deck. 

Besides these half-penny boats, there are others which run 
at double and quadruple fares ; but they carry a different class 
of passengers, and run greater distances, stopping at inter- 
mediate stations. They are all remunerative speculations; 
and they may be said to have created the traffic by which 
they thrive. They have driven the watermen's wherries off 
the river almost as effectually as the railways have driven the 
stage-coaches from the road ; but, like them, they have multi- 
plied the passengers by the thousand, and have awakened the 
public to a new sense of the value of the river as a means of 
transit from place to place. 



227 



A PEJNISTYWOBTH OE LOCOMOTION. 



If a history could be "written of all the men who, by various 
means, have grown rich and retired upon a competence, we 
feel persuaded that by far the greater number of them would 
be found to be the men who have adopted the commendable 
maxim of giving " a good pennyworth for a penny." The 
bold adventurers, the successful speculators, the unscrupulous 
intriguers for sudden gain, constitute, even when taken all 
together, but a fraction of the immense section of society who, 
having the world under their feet, live in the enjoyment of 
respectability and ease. How numerous this class has grown 
of late years, the observant pedestrian who rambles occa- 
sionally through the suburbs and surroundings of the metro- 
polis has a very sufficient idea. The thousands and tens of 
thousands of genteel residences which have risen and are 
daily rising in every direction, and which are fit for no other 
purpose than the occupancy of families well-to-do in the 
world, afford a sufficient attestation of the numbers of the 
class to which we allude : they have achieved independence 
by the industries of commerce ; and they owe their success 
mainly, as their history would show, to the practical adoption 
of the maxim above quoted. The discovery has at length 
been made, though it dawned but slowly upon the commercial 
mind, that the surest, though it may not be the shortest, way 
to success is by responding to the demands of the million at 



228 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

a rate of remuneration which shall ensure the growth and 
continuance of that demand. In consequence of the general 
reception of this discovery as a truth, and in consequence too 
of the competition which it has done not a little to increase, 
every necessary of life, and not a few of its luxuries, are now 
to he procured at a price which leaves the "barest fractional 
margin of profit to the purveyor and the distributor, and 
which becomes remunerative only through the increased de- 
mand to which cheapness invariably supplies a stimulus. 

But we are not going to write an essay on the peculiarities 
of present-day traffic, though something might be said on that 
subject worth the reading. "We are going to take a ride in a 
penny omnibus. Here we are at Holborn-hill : the omnibus, 
a white one, has just turned round, and we are the first to 
jump in and ensconce ourselves in a further corner. Now we 
can ride to Tottenham Court-road for a penny, or to Edgware- 
road, if we choose, for two-pence. We are hardly seated, 
when an elderly dame literally lunettes in, having a large 
brown-paper parcel, almost as big as a pannier, and a crushed 
and semi-collapsed bandbox, which she quietly arranges on 
the cushioned seat, as though she had engaged that whole side 
to herself. She is followed in an instant by an elderly and 
portly figure in patched boots, and well-worn dingy great 
coat, who takes the right-hand door corner, where he sits with 
clasped horny hands, nursing a corpulent umbrella, upon the 
handle of which he rests his unshaven chin, as with rueful 
face he peers over the low door. Bang ! goes something on 
the roof; the explosion startles him from his contemplations, 
and causes him to poke out his head, which is instantly drawn 
in again, as the conductor opens the door, and keeps it open 
while a living tide rushes in — one, two, three, four, fi.ve, six, 
seven, eight, nine ! " No more room here, conductor : full 
here! ,, " Full inside !" roars the conductor, in reply. But 
we don't move on yet ; there is a vision of muddy high-lows, 
corduroy garments, and coat-tails, clambering up consecutively 



a pennyworth of locomotion. 229 

in the rear tinder the guidance of the conductor, and making a 
deafening uproar on the roof in the ceremony of arranging 
themselves upon what has been not inappropriately styled the 
" knife-board. " " All right " bursts involuntarily from the 
lips of the conductor, as the last pair of bluchers disappears 
above our heads. Now the " 'bus " gets under way, and we 
begin to look around us, and find that we form one of a very 
mixed company indeed. Opposite us sits the old lady with the 
bandbox and monster bundle. By her side is a very thin 
journeyman baker in his oven undress, and next to him a young 
man carrying a blue bag, and wearing a diamond ring on his 
little finger, a pair of false brilliants by way of shirt- studs, 
and a violet- coloured neck-tie. To his left is the wife of a 
mechanic, carrying a capless, bald-headed fat baby in her 
arms — baby sputtering, staring, and kicking in an ecstasy of 
delight, and stretching out its little puddings of fingers to 
reach the diamond-ringed hand that grasps the blue bag. 
Next to the mother of the baby is a blue-jacket, a regular tar, 
who, it would seem, has entered the omnibus for the sake of 
enjoying a " turn-in," and is endeavouring to compose himself 
to sleep. Next to him is our friend with his companion the 
stout umbrella, which he still hugs with undiminished affection. 
Of the party sitting on our side we cannot give so good an 
account, by reason of a very voluminous widow, weighing, at 
a rough guess, some twenty stone, who has almost eclipsed our 
view in that direction, and whose presence oppresses us with 
an idea of the cheapness of land-carriage in the present day 
— estimating it by weight. "We stop for half a minute at the 
top of Chancery-lane, to put down the owner of the blue bag ; 
somebody too drops from the roof, but another climbs up, and 
another rushes in as we are again getting under way, and, 
still full, we proceed onwards. We drop three more of our 
company at the corner of Bed Lion- street, and among them, 
greatly to the relief of the horses and the writer, the pon- 
derous widow. Now we find ourselves sitting next to a shoe- 



230 CTJEIOSITIES OP LOXDOX LIPE. 

maker, who is taking home a pair of new boots of his own 
manufacture ; we can tell that much by the channels cut by 
countless wax-ends through the hardened skin of his little 
fingers. Next to him are a couple of boys, who, we suspect, 
have no other business to follow just now than to enjoy a 
penny ride for the pleasure of walking back again. We are 
soon in New Oxford-street, and now the elderly and portly 
man whom we first noticed lifts his corpulent umbrella care- 
fully out of the omnibus, and disappears in the shop of an 
advertising tailor, probably in search of a new great- coat, 
which indeed it is high time that he had provided. Nobody 
gets up in place of the last few departures — for a good and 
sufficient reason, namely, that we are approaching the end of 
the pennyworth, and that all who go beyond Tottenham 
Court-road must pay a double fare. Now the conductor pops 
his head in at the window, and, to save time, collects the 
pence of all the penny passengers, so that there will be nothing 
to do beyond letting them out when we stop. At Tottenham 
Court-road all the passengers alight but ourselves, even the 
old lady emerging from behind her bandboxes, and walking off 
towards St. Giles's. But new customers are waiting, and in 
less than two minutes we are crammed again with a new 
cargo as various as the preceding one, and on we roll towards 
the Edgware-road. We set out with twelve insiders, and we 
stop at the end of our route with but four, and yet the con- 
ductor has taken twenty-two fares, by an accurate calculation, 
without actually pulling up to a stand -still once on the way. 
The necessity of despatch is recognised by both parties to the 
contract, and passengers, paying their money before they 
alight, are seen to step out while the vehicle goes on at an 
easy pace, and others clamber in or on to the roof in the same 
way. 

We have got to the end of the journey, and nothing better 
offering on our return, we ascend to the roof, and ride back on 
the outside to our starting-point. There is a great deal of the 



A PENNYWORTH OF LOCOMOTION. 231 

world to be seen in the inside of an omnibus, as those who 
are accustomed to ride in them very well know, but there is 
still more to be seen on the outside. The "knife-board," that 
is, the longitudinal seat which stretches from end to end of the 
roof, is a very favourite position with a numerous class of the 
metropolitan world. It is sufficiently far above the noise of 
the wheels to allow of undisturbed conversation, and is a 
point of eminence from which everything going forward below 
and around can be plainly seen. We have ourselves made 
from this point some curious surveys of men and things which 
we conld not possibly have made in a less elevated position, or 
which did not, like that, afford us an ever-moving panorama 
of social life and action. "We were indebted to it, not long 
ago, for a series of gastronomical observations of the mode in 
which London tradesmen live — a view, by the way, which 
might have satisfied the most sceptical of the material pro- 
sperity enjoyed by that class in spite of occasional cries of "bad 
times." Our omnibus slowly proceeded down a narrow and 
obstructed street. It was a warm summer's evening, between 
the hours of nine and ten, and the shopmen of the district, 
from want of back parlours, were taking their supper in the 
front floor, with the windows of their apartments open. "We 
say nothing of the garnished sirloins, parsley- decked hams, 
pickled salmon and lobster salads, with cold gooseberry pies in 
profusion, of which we had a vision sufficiently distinct, as we 
were carried along — having no intention of carping at the 
dietary of John Bull. Our sole comment shall be the remark 
of a rather hungry-looking genius in fustian who shared the 
knife-board with us, whose eyes twinkled, and whose mouth 
visibly watered at the sight, as he exclaimed spontaneously, 
"Crikey! don't they do it up tidy up here — jest!"— 
wiping his mouth. 

The boorish incivility and savage behaviour of omnibus 
drivers and conductors was, not many years ago, the theme of 



232 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LITE. 

universal irritation and complaint, and very justly so. At 
the present moment, the reverse is the case, a civil and ob- 
liging demeanour being the general characteristic of the pro- 
fession. The key to the transformation is, doubtless, to be 
found in the fact, that civility pays better than its opposite. 
There is still, however, room for improvement in some parti- 
culars, as the following little incident will show. Entering 
the other day an omnibus which, by the inscription on its 

side, professed to carry passengers to church, we found 

ourselves, while yet a quarter of a mile from the church, the 
solitary occupants of it. The omnibus stopped, and the con- 
ductor called upon us to alight, saying that they did not go 
any further. 

"Not go any further !" said we — "you don't pretend that 
I am to get out and walk a quarter of a mile in the rain ?" 

"Don't go any further, sir." 

" Yes you do; you have the name of church painted 

on the side of your omnibus ; you go there, certainly." 

"Don't go any further, sir." 

"Don't tell me that nonsense, you go where you profess to 
go, I suppose." 

" Don't go any further, sir." 

"But you must go further. I pay to be taken to 

church, and to the church I will be taken." 

"Don't go any farther, sir." 

"Then I won't get out — you may drive me back to where 
you took me up, and I'll pay you nothing." 

Conductor (slamming the door with a bang that shakes the 
whole fabric, and bawling to the driver), " Go-on- to-th- 
church-gen'lman-won't-git-out!" and away we drive, slashing 
through the mud and mire, and rolling, pitching, and labouring 
like a vessel in a storm, until we reach the church. At last 
we alight, and ask the conductor why he wished to set down 
his passengers a quarter of a mile from their destination. 



A PEKNTWOKTH OF LOCOMOTION. 233 

" A quarter of mile ! 'Tisn't six yards ! you likes a good 
penn'orth, anyhow; you do." 

If we confess to the soft impeachment, we shall add hut 
one more to the numherless illustrations of the great leading 
principle which governs commercial transactions in the 
present day. 



234 



THE OBSTINATE SHOP. 



'While occasionally threading our way through the great 
routes of traffic intersecting London in all directions, and 
contemplating the miles of shops which form the most 
attractive feature that commerce condescends to exhibit to the 
"world, we have often compared them, in imagination, to the 
human face divine. Such a comparison may be a fanciful 
conceit on our part, which, it may be, will hardly hold good 
in all respects ; yet are there some points of resemblance 
worthy, perhaps, of a passing notice, and suggestive too of 
reflections not absolutely devoid of a moral significance. 
Look, for instance, at yonder jeweller's shop, with its window 
of one clear and solid crystal, behind which, all arranged with 
exquisite taste, the gold, the silver, and the precious gems, of 
which a curious art has more than doubled the value, are glit- 
tering with a splendour that dazzles the eye, and accumulated 
with a profusion that defies calculation. What a favoured 
shop it is ! how it might roll in riches, if it were given to 
rolling ! what a smiling face it bares to the public view ! and 
how it laughs at everything, and how it ignores in toto the 
rise and fall in the price of the four-pound loaf ! Then, look 
again at that remarkable contrast over the way, which sells — 
no, which wants to sell — a few wretched daubs of worthless 
pictures that nobody is simple enough to buy ; see what a 
dirty face it has, and how the grimy tears trickle down its 



THE OBSTINATE SHOP. 235 

unwashed cheeks of bulging crown-glass ; with what a moody, 
desperate, half-suicidal look it confronts the passers-by, who 
will not stop to make its acquaintance ; and note how it de- 
spairs of ever making its way in the world, and is fast dying 
out drearily and dirtily, and vanishing into oblivion. Again, 
a little farther on — see what an impudent shop is here ! Look 
at his brazen assumption ; he actually walks out of his way, 
and pushes you out of yours ; he has thrust himself out of 
doors, and lays half his length along upon the pavement. 
" Look at me," he says, " here I am ; I'm somebody, let me 
tell you. "What do I sell ? what don't I sell ? Tell me that. 
Whatever you want I've got, you may depend upon it ; and 
if you pass on without buying, why it's so much the worse 
for you." This fellow deals in everything, because he wants 
to deal with everybody — and he does it too, and grows cor- 
pulent in quick time. Here again is another little shop, 
altogether as modest as his neighbour is impudent ; he is too 
bashful to push himself forward, but retires a little back from 
the crush of thronging pedestrians; he is humble-minded, 
but yet bright and cheerful, with the consciousness of modest 
merit ; he makes no great pretensions, but says to the dis- 
cerning customer, " I have that within which passeth show ;" 
and so he has — choice works of art, valuable old tomes, me- 
diaeval manuscripts, coins dug up from buried empires, and 
many other things rare and worth seeking after by those who 
want them and know their value. A few paces further on, 
and here is another specimen of shop nature, with a face like 
that of a gamester's bully, in which lying and robbery are to 
be read in every feature ; he is all pretence and wire-blind, 
and has nothing to sell, except perhaps a few cabbage-leaf 
cigars, and a dozen or two of imitative meerschaums, which 
are nothing but mere shams of pipe- clay. He opens his 
mouth as wide as a barn-door, and talks of horses ! horses ! 
horses ! he is up to all the mysteries of the turf, knows the 
real " tip," and invites you to come in and win; but don't go ; 



236 CTJEIOSITIES OF LOKDON LIFE. 

if you do, yon will find him as dirty and empty within as he 
is pretentions without, and smelling of brandy and stale beer 
and tobacco. He is a betting-shop, thoroughly abandoned 
and unprincipled — the thief's lair, the robber's den, the ban- 
dit's cavern, of commercial London. 

Are there not, further, shops of every variety of disposition 
and shade of character? Don't we see shops of good prin- 
ciple, trying to do what they can for the benefit of mankind ? 
and don't we see too, sometimes, low and insolent ones, that 
ought to be ashamed to show their faces ? Are there not 
shops so warm and snug and well-lined that they don't care a 
pin for appearances or the opinion of the world, but button 
up their pockets and snap their fingers at everybody ? Then 
is there not the harum-scarum shop, dashing like mad, now at 
one thing and now at another, and doing a world of mischief 
to its neighbours, while it ruins itself in the process ? iMore- 
over, have we not seen the repentant shop, which, after a 
youth of insane vagaries, settles down at last to respectability 
and an honest trade ? And, lastly, have we not all seen, and 
don't we see every day, the hypocritical shop, with its front of 
shining brass and plate glass, and its counterfeit goods and 
fraudulent announcements ? and doesn't it smash, and go to 
ruin before our eyes, every day, only to begin again to-morrow? 
There is no denying all this, and no escaping, either, the con- 
viction that shops have a way of their own, and that it is 
sometimes very difficult to break them in, and make them 
take to the right way — the way to competence through the 
route of honesty. And this brings us to the subject of the 
present paper — the Obstinate Shop, whose history we shall 
very summarily record. 

We may almost be said to have known the Obstinate Shop 
before it was born, seeing that some eleven years ago it was a 
small patch of ground about twelve feet square, backed by a 
dead wall, and inhabited by a very quarrelsome cock, generally 
in a state of mud and excitement, and three or four roopy 



THE OBSTINATE SHOP. 237 

hens, fenced in by a dilapidated railing. One day this happy 
family were suddenly summoned to the silent land, and before 
their bones were picked bare, a gathering of bricks and mor- 
tar and deal boards assembled on the spot, and in a few weeks 
the Obstinate Shop rose into being. Like the "fine little boy " 
of the nursery myth, 

" It came into the world with two eyes in its head, 
The one was green and the other was red ;" 

in other words, it was born "a doctor's shop," as the neigh- 
bours called it, with two monstrous carboys of crimson and 
emerald hues, which had a prodigious effect at night time, as 
they glared across the road and routed the horses from the 
cabstand, which heretofore had held undisputed possession of 
the ground. It began its career as " Medical Hall," which 
words in golden letters were blazoned upon its forehead, and 
its first attempts at speech were such unintelligible jargon as 
defied comprehension. " Ext. sen. pulv. jal. tinct. rhub.," 
it said; and then, "tart. em. pulv. ipecac," and more of the 
sort ; and then it would ring the changes with " glaub. sal. g. 
ammon. sapon. cast.," etc. etc. Whether it was that this 
kind of rhetoric was lost upon the neighbourhood, or whether 
they were well enough supplied with that sort of goods 
already, we cannot undertake to say ; but after staring for 
three wbole months through his green and red orbs, the shop 
was tired out, dismounted the Medical Hall, sent off its 
goggle eyes to a less benighted neighbourhood, and shut him- 
self up in dudgeon for a whole month. 

It recovered its temper at the end of that time, and showed 
quite a joyful face when a young new-married couple came 
and crammed it full of gay prints and silks, and shawls and 
dresses, and laces and gloves, and everything that ladies love 
so dearly to wear, and to tumble about on the counter. The 
new mistress was industrious enough, and might be seen, "a 
portrait of a lady at full length," any morning at seven 



238 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

o'clock, as she stood in the empty window, dressing it for the 
day, while her hnshand polished the glass, swept the floor, 
and arranged the goods inside. Too soon, however, the 
cheerful face became overshadowed with a clond, and then it 
grew sallow and careful, and then it disappeared for some 
months, while the husband had all the work to do alone : his 
face, too, grew longer and longer, and from a hopeful man he 
grew a sorrowful one ; and when the young wife appeared 
again, with an infant at her bosom, she was no longer a 
cheerful, but a worn and withered woman, and hopeless, but 
for the child which clung round her heart, and was never out 
of her arms. The poor man, it was plain, did not know how 
to act ; his goods spoiled, or went behind the fashion for want 
of a sale ; but still he held on — for two years he did so, and 
then came debt and difficulty, in the midst of which he dis- 
appeared. It seemed all the fault of the Obstinate Shop ; it 
would not do business, in spite of all their hard work and 
harder thrift. 

" A cobbler lie was, and he sat in a stall," 

who had the shop next ; it had been let to him at a low rent, 
in consequence of the failure of the former tenants, and he 
sat there hammering away upon his lapstone gaily enough ; 
and he might have sat there to this day, had he been content 
to let it remain a cobbler's stall. But he must needs take it 
into his head to make it a dashing cheap shoe shop, with 
borrowed capital ; and in less than twelve months he went the 
way of his predecessors. The shop was as obstinate with the 
cobbler as it was with the draper, and he was obliged to retire 
with his lapstone and last to his original cellar, where — for 
cobblers have a philosophy as tough as sole-leather, and proof 
against adversity — we are happy to state he still plies his 
useful calling. 

A tailor tried it next ; but, as he rarely tried on a suit upon 
a customer's back, or succeeded in taking the measure of the 



THE OBSTINATE SHOP. 239 

neighbourhood, the good man, in the course of a very few 
months, justified the oracular decree of the united company of 
cabmen who watched his operations, and was, to use the 
precise terms of their prophecy, himself " sewed up," and 
compelled to depart. 

By this time the shop had got a bad character, which there 
is no doubt that it richly deserved ; the bill-stickers began to 
cast a longing eye upon its shutters, now grown dingy and 
blistered, as they went their rounds ; one adventurous knight 
of the brush, unable to resist the opportunity, clapped a broad- 
side in the centre ; this served as a signal to the whole tribe, 
and in a few days the Obstinate Shop was swaddled in the 
large-type literature of trade. How long it remained thus 
papered up, while the idle vagabonds of the district played 
pitch-halfpenny beneath its shadow, we cannot exactly say ; 
but we distinctly recollect the astonishing efforts of the water- 
man of the cab-stand, who for two whole days was digging, 
scraping, rubbing, and swilling his way through the solid hide 
of placards, to get at the shutters beneath. These were at 
length exhumed, taken down, and refreshed with a coat of 
paint ; the dust, dirt, and old shreds of broadcloth, scraps of 
list, and other disjecta of the vanished tailor, were swept forth, 
and the place cleaned and put in trim. Then a broad- 
shouldered man, with clean white apron and sleeves to match, 
was seen going in and out in company with a number of 
barrels, boxes, and baskets, and canvass- covered packages of 
various sizes; up went a projecting sign-board, visible half a 
mile off, and inscribed on both sides with the words, "Dodds, 
Butterman;" and next morning the shop opened once more, 
with the lower half of the window cut away, and exhibiting 
an interior crammed with pork, bacon, butter, cheese, hams, 
French eggs, etc. etc., all, as the modest Dodds declared, of 
very first-rate quality. In spite of a marked want of encou- 
ragement from the very first, Dodds waited for trade, with a 
conviction that it must come at last, when the merit of his 



240 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LITE. 

articles had had time to make its way. Finding customers 
would not come to him, he went in search of them ; hawked 
his countiy pork around among the neighbours, and when he 
could not get it off fresh, pickled it, to save its life, and got in 
more. He left no stone unturned to raise a connection ; he 
canvassed personally, billed, puffed, and circularized the whole 
parish, but all to no purpose ; the Obstinate Shop would not 
give in ; so Dodds gave out, and moved half a mile lower 
down the road, where he has thriven well since. 

" Buy a pair of fine soles this morning, sir — beautiful 
cod's head and shoulders — any fine salmon to-day, sir?' 
such were the accents which suddenly assailed our ears as we 
were strolling past the Obstinate Shop, a lew weeks only after 
the departure of Dodds. Finn the fishmonger had taken his 
place and succeeded to the butterman's board, merely depress- 
ing it to an inclined plane. It was evident very soon that 
Pinn was a man either of extraordinary penetration or of 
very limited capital, for he had decamped within 8 fortnight, 
and abandoned the experiment, and we lost sight of him till 
about a twelvemonth ago, when we stumbled upon him at 
Billingsgate, with far more fish around him. and flesh about 
him than formed either his personal or proprietary stock at 
the Obstinate Shop. 

After suffering once more a month's eclipse, down came the 
shutters again, under the auspices of an anonymous trades- 
man, who does not choose to parade his patronymic before the 
world. Xow it is literature that makes an assault upon the 
neighbourhood. The windows are again restored and cleaned, 
and each pane serves for the frame of one or more pictures of 
events extraordinary or supernatural. Here Xapoleon Bona- 
parte, on a white horse, is surmounting the Alps, which he 
cannot fail to clear in three paces ; and a score of blue French- 
men are lugging along a cannon, whose length is about the 
diameter of the base of ]Mont St. Gothard. Here a dreadful 
gunpowdery explosion has blown twenty valiant fellows into 



THE OBSTINATE SHOP. 241 

the air, and out of a windmill which is not big enough to 
contain the hats of half of them. Here is a whole gallery of 
works of art of the same kind, all illustrative of bloody deeds, 
ghastly narratives, and goblin fictions. Here the Times is 
lent to read, and maybe had for half-price to-morrow ; and 
infidel publications, and blasphemy and sedition, under a thin 
disguise, or in no disguise at all, are dispensed at the smallest 
possible charge. But the Obstinate Shop won't stand even 
this ; the man without a name gets a pressing invitation from 
a worthy magistrate, and does not come back to take down the 
shutters ; and again the shop has its own way. 

" Sweets to the sweet" lollypops ! A young widow, with 
a fat, kicking baby, and a shop-full of black jack, hard-bake, 
Bonaparte's ribs, stick-jaw, candied cobbler, and a whole 
catalogue of nice and delectable things, which are so excellent 
for children to let alone — such is the next exhibition displayed 
in the Oostinate Shop. How the widow could never make it 
answer — how the little dirty ^ filthy, ragged, and never- suf- 
ficiently- to-be- despised young heathens that had no money 
glued their grimy faces to the glass, and flattened their noses 
against the window all day long; and how the charming, 
lovely, respectable and amiable little Christian dears who had 
plenty of money to spare never came near it — how unprin- 
cipled young thieves crawled into her shop and helped them- 
selves while her back was turned, and how Smashing Moll 
made a dead set at her, and, by purchasing pennyworths and 
getting good change for base coin, half ruined her — and how 
the poor widow was obliged to give it up for want of custom, 
and go out to service, putting her child to nurse — all these 
things the reader must imagine, as we have not time to dwell 
upon them. 

After the widow came a baker, who dug the ground in 
front, and built an oven — and went away. After the baker 
came a beer- seller, who filled the oven with barrels, and wasted 
fifty pounds of hard cash in trying to persuade the people that 



242 CUEIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

" this is the noted house for XXX" — and went away. After 
the beer- seller came an oyster-man, who stuck to his damp 
trade all day and half the night, and added ginger-beer to 
oysters, and pork-pies to ginger-beer, and speculated in peri- 
winkles — and went away. After the oyster-man came a 
potato-dealer, who cried with a loud voice ever and anon, 
" Three poun' tuppens! three poun' tuppens!" — and went 
away. The Obstinate Shop would stand none of them ; it had 
made up its mind to do no business, and no business has it 
ever done worth the mentioning. When we last saw it, it 
was shut up, and again a prey to the bill-stickers, stuck about 
with a hundred labels telling of its disgrace, and serving for 
no other purpose than as a warning to traders to beware of 
Obstinate Shops. 



243 



THE COMPLAINT OP A STRANGE CHARACTER. 



I suppose I was born to set the world an example — at any 

rate, I have figured in every capacity that the most ingenious 

imagination can conceive, and have filled well-nigh every 

situation which mortal man, whether living or dead, can be 

made to occupy. I have led a long life, in the course of 

which I have been everything, and I can say with almost 

equal truth I have done nothing. Every feature of my face 

is familiar to at least fifty thousand of her Majesty's subjects; 

and yet I have but few acquaintances, and still fewer friends. 

I, of all men, am to be designated as the man who has 

"played many parts." I have gone through every possible 

calamity incidental to the human lot, besides a great many 

that are impossible even to the most unfortunate ; and I have 

been blessed a thousand times in the course of my life beyond 

the sum of human felicity — and, what may appear strange, I 

have never grieved at the one lot, nor rejoiced at the other. I 

have fought desperately, with but a rag of drapery round my 

loins, against savage lions and tigers, wrestled with monsters 

of the forest and the flood, slept tranquilly in the embrace of 

the boa- constrictor — been pierced through and through with 

every description of deadly weapon, ancient and modern — 

and been hurled headlong from horrible precipices into horrible 

gulfs — and here I am, and none the worse for it all. And I 

have sat at a magnificent feast arrayed in gorgeous robes in 

m 2 



244 craiosiTiES of loxdox life. 

" niy ancestral halls" — I have led my valiant hosts to vic- 
tory in embattled fields, and hare swayed my sceptre on a 
golden throne — and here I am, scribbling in a two-pair back, 
and none the better for it all. How all this came about, the 
reader will soon know. The key to my " strange, eventful 
history' lies in one word — Ladies and gentlemen, I am a 
Model. 

I was born in London, not far from where the Pantheon 
now stands, in Oxford- street. Mv father was an ambitions 
artist, who wasted the best part of his life in the pursuit of 
what is called high art, and passed the days of his manhood's 
years seated from morning to night in front of a canvas as 
big as he could afford to buv. My first sensation of existence 
was one of cold • I suspect I woke into consciousness for the 
first time one October morning, through lying bottom upwards 
on the table, in the character of a murdered innocent in my 
father's great picture of the "Massacre of the Judean Chil- 
dren under Herod.'' I squalled and kicked, on awaking 
with the cold; and if I know anything of my fathers temper 
and usages on such occasions, these signs of life irritated him, 
and I was packed off out of the room as good for nothing, at 
least until I could be coaxed again to sleep. During infancy, 
I can recollect, I prattled a good deal on my mother's knee 
in the capacity of the child of the Aladonna, as well as doing 
Cupid in every variety of attitude. When I grew old enough, 
my mother taught me to read, which was all the instruction 
I ever got. I taught myself to write, with a crayon on 
blank canvases, in after years. I should in all probability 
have been sent to school, had mv mother lived. But I had 
the unhappiness to lose her in my seventh year, and was 
turned over to the care of a housekeeper, who was a crabbed, 
cindery kind of vixen, and but too glad to get rid of me 
under any pretext. I passed my time chiefly in my father's 
studio, where I would sit for hours on the floor, with the 
handle of a little cabinet drawer in my mouth, in the cha- 



THE COMPLAINT OF A STRANGE CHARACTER. 245 

ractcr of Homulus sucking trie wolf, or lie sprawling under a 
few vine-leaves gathered from the garden, as one or both of 
the babes in the wood — or sat demurely, or stood with a 
fool's cap on my head, or gesticulated in every variety of 
attitude for the pupils of a village school — my father poking 
me into any shape he wanted with the knobby end of his 
mahl- stick, without rising from his seat. He grew a sort of 
mysterious terror to me, and under his cold and petrifying 
glance I was afraid to move, and thus early acquired the 
habit of remaining in one position, however disagreeable it 
might be, without flinching, for the hour together. This, how- 
ever, was the only discipline which I underwent ; and having 
plenty of time for exercise with the neighbours' children, I 
grew up tolerably healthy, but with a mortal hatred to the 
arts and everything connected with them. Thus by degrees 
I advanced into boyhood, and became big enough to serve for 
a shepherd-boy or a young cattle- driver — a young angler or 
a shrimper with fluttering rags and bare feet — or the young 
princes in the tower in a close-fitting suit of silk and velvet. 
As young Arthur on the point of having his eyes put out, 
I was shown off at one of the exhibitions to such advantage 
that I became quite famous among the artists as a model 
stripling, and was bandied about from one to the other among 
the professionals, figuring one day as an angel on Jacob's 
ladder, starving the next as Tshmael under a rock, and rioting 
on the third as the boy Bacchus crowned with a wreath of 
vine-leaves. My poor father found this much more profit- 
able than putting me to school — and to school I never went. 
I might have learned something at least of the practice of 
the art, but my father never offered to teach me or encour- 
aged me to learn. He said I had no genius. I imagine he 
was right ; certain it is I had no inclination, and never de- 
sired to make the experiment. The older I grew the more 
my figure came into request — my faultless shape, my well- 
modelled features, and, above all, the statue-like tranquillity 



246 cntiosiTiEs of loxdox life. 

of position which I maintained when once " set," brought me 
a connection, and for many years I was scarcely a day unen- 
gaged ! ITy father was seized with paralysis just as I became 
of age, and, dying shortly after, bequeathed me his debts to 
pay, a few unfinished pictures, and the old furniture of the 
house. It took everything there was to square accounts with 
the creditors, who considerately gave me a receipt in full 
when they found there was nothing more to be got. Thus 
was I driven, at my entrance into manhood, to abandon the 
paternal home and retire to a private lodging — to begin the 
world for myself, with nothing but myself — my five feet ten 
and a half inches, for my capital. 

I was now a man, and a model, but I was nothing else, and 
had no prospect of becoming anything else, though I ran- 
sacked my brains day and night in the hope of finding some 
other opening for my no-talents. I thought of the stage, but 
I had no memory, or if I had such, a faculty it had never 
been called into exercise. I tried for a clerkship, but they 
would not have my writing, which. I laboured in vain a long 
time to improve — and I had but indefinite notions of arith- 
metic. There was no other road open to me — I was good for 
nothing but to be looked at and painted, and to that I must 
submit. I must play the part of an animated image, a sort 
of breathing brother to a marble block, a lay-figure, or a 
plaster-cast. There was one consolation attending my lot. 
It never debased me to the level of the low and vulgar ; if I 
was condemned by circumstances to be a model, I determined 
to be a model, ostensibly at least, of a gentleman — and out- 
wardly to assume that rank in the world, cost what privations 
it might. So I have lived a gentleman upon town, my hands 
unsoiled by labour, my linen white as a lord',s my costume 
and whole outward man undeniably genteel. For now nearly 
forty years have I been known among the profession as Gen- 
tleman G ; and if I have achieved no triumphs in my 

own person, my vera effigies, in a thousand characters, has 



THE COMPLATST OF A STRANGE CHARACTER. 247 

won the applause and admiration of mankind. I have been 
hung — ahem — in five hundred galleries, as an impersonation 
of the warrior, the senator, and the hero ; and in as many more 
perhaps as brigand, bandit, or bold outlaw. I have lent my 
head to Achilles, Paris, and Hector — to Eneas, Turnus, and 
Euryalus. My lower limbs have been substituted for those 
of half the great men of the present and past centuries. On 
feet of mine King Charles the First walks to the block, Xapo- 
leon forces the bridge of Areola, and Xelson boards the ships of 
the enemy. I have languished in the dungeons of the Inquisi- 
tion because Galileo could not be had to do it, and been ban- 
daged for execution instead of the unfortunate D'Enghien for 
the same reason; and I can say that I have borne either fate 
with an equal mind. Habit, which creates our world for us, has 
long reconciled me to the position which untoward circum- 
stances thrust me into. As age has crept upon me, I am able 
to say that neither my usefulness nor popularity has declined. 
I am as good now (or at least I was till lately) for a sage or 
a senator as I was in infancy for a Cupid, or a babe massacred 
or at the breast; — I am considered capital as a cardinal, as I 
was twenty years ago for a bravo. I have had, too, all along, 
a pleasing satisfaction in knowing that in the little circle in 
which I domestically revolve, I have been regarded with a 
kind of mystery, and have been looked upon for years as some 
decayed personage of eminence, living incog, the life of a recluse 
after the setting of former greatness. I may say without vanity 
that my appearance hitherto more than justifies this flattering 
supposition, which I have cautiously refrained from dissipating. 
Reports have sometimes been whispered about that I was the 
Dauphin of Prance, the son of the unfortunate Louis the Six- 
teenth, and that my pensive cast of countenance was the index 
of ineradicable grief for my murdered parents and lost throne. 
At other times I have been set down as a Polish prince, calmly 
waiting an opportunity to vindicate the independence of my 
native country. Then I have been thought a Eussian noble- 



248 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

nian, escaped miraculously from the massacre of the conspira- 
tors at the accession of Nicholas to the throne of the Czars. 
None of these guesses at my supposed royal or noble origin 
have, however, retained a definite shape for any length of time, 
but have varied with the demands of the hour. If I have 
never denied the truth of any of them, neither have I counte- 
nanced a single conjecture of the kind; and when each in its 
turn has vanished away, the conviction has remained in the 
minds of the observant public, that though they may be mis- 
taken in discovering my real rank, yet there could not be a 
doubt that I had been somebody — which is true enough. 

But woe is me ! "^Vhile others are endeavouring in vain to 
discover the source of my former imagined greatness, I have 
myself recently made the discovery of a fact which will be the 
ruin of me. Now that my head is bald, and my whiskers 
nearly white, and other signs of years come stealing on, the 
source of my income threatens to fail me — to fail at the time 
when it will be most wanted, at the approach of the infirmities 
of age. It was the other clay, as I lay stretched upon a bed of 
death, upon which I had personated Cardinal Wolsey, with 
chalked cheek and half-averted face, for four hours a dav for 
the last week, that the horrible fact dawned, or rather darted 
with fierce and prophetic force upon my mind. I have striven 
in vain to shake off the conviction that then forced itself upon 
my distracted conscience; but it will not be got rid of — on 
the contrary, it grows daily stronger, and will not be beckoned 
away. Have compassion upon me, my friends, I Air grow- 
ing fat — I feel it daily and hourly in every inch of my flesh 
— and I am a ruined man. At tEe rate I have been going on 
for the last month, I shall be twenty stone weight in another 
year — and then "Othello's occupation's gone," and I must 
take up with Boniface or Falstaff without stuffing. "Oh that 
this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself 
into" anything, so that I got rid of it, and retained my gentle- 
manly proportions and necessary competence. In vain have I 



THE COMPLAINT OF A STRANGE CHARACTER. 249 

resorted to every device of diet, and regimen, and exercise ; 
I have tried semi- starvation and total abstinence, and walked 
myself in the early morning hours till weary and footsore. All 
is of no avail ; I am doomed to perpetual expansion. My close- 
fitting suit has been already twice let out, in order to take me 
in. My patrons already begin to murmur the fatal words, "Too 
stout," which are more than I can bear. Ah, those fatal mono- 
syllables ! — they are the terms of my death-warrant. I am a 
gone model. What will become of me ? There is but one hope 
left, and of that I hasten to avail myself. I throw my case 
upon the consideration of a generous public. Society certainly 
owes me something. The age which worships heroes so 
devoutly and enthusiastically, will not altogether despise the 
representative of a hundred heroes. A race which subscribes 
its thousands to erect a monument to one great man, will not 
refuse the necessaries of life to one who has in his time per- 
formed the part of almost every man of note in the biography. 
My monuments exist already in a thousand shapes, and are 
enshrined in costly cabinets and lordly galleries, while my 
rebellious unfilial flesh yet walks the earth, and, unless a 
grateful public soon comes to the rescue, will be condemned to 
wander in forlorn and friendless obesity, a prey to the cold 
alms of alien charity. I appeal, therefore, to the philanthropy 
of my fellow-men, and to their love for heroism and the arts. 
My publisher has kindly consented to receive and forward to 
me the contributions of a benevolent and discriminating public, 
who in preventing the poverty which threatens my future lot, 
will know that they are supplying comfort in his old age to the 
luckless representative of most of the master-spirits of the 
past — and to one who, lacking it is true many desirable 
accomplishments, has been always, when off duty, in appear- 
ance at least, the model of a gentleman. 



ai 3 



250 



LONDON SUNDAY TRADING. 



One of the most startling spectacles to be met with, in the 
great wilderness of London — because it is the one which 
comes upon the stranger most unexpectedly — is that of the 
Sunday Market. To the staid and sober inhabitant of a quiet 
country town, who has been accustomed from his youth upwards 
to see the Sabbath at least outwardly reverenced, the sight of 
one of these crowded places, the theatre of a vociferous and 
furious traffic on the morning of the day of rest, is generally 
revolting in the extreme. We had lately the curiosity to 
visit such a scene, with a view to forming some judgment as 
to what might be urged in its defence, and we shall now pro- 
ceed to describe our impressions. 

It is about eight o'clock in the morning of the second Sunday 
in April, 1850, and we are standing at the junction of the 
Barbican with Chis well- street, at the point where this line of 
thoroughfare is intersected by Whitecross-street, up which we 
have to proceed as far as Old Street-road, about a quarter of 
a mile, the whole extent of which is the arena of one of the 
most extensive markets in the metropolis. 

Although the shutters of most of the shops, nearly five- 
sixths of which are devoted to Sunday- trading, have been 
down for nearly an hour, but little business has been done or 
is yet doing. The few customers who have already com- 
pleted their purchases, and are hastening homewards, have an 



LONDON SUNDAY TEADING. 251 

aspect of decency, almost of respectability; others of similar 
appearance are gliding abont here and there, and transacting 
their business with all possible celerity ; and it is tolerably 
plain to the observer that the use of the Sunday Market is not 
to them a matter of choice. These are probably persons who, 
not having received their weekly wages until a late hour, and 
being compelled by poverty to live from hand to mouth, have 
no other means of procuring their Sunday dinner than that 
which this market presents. It is obvious from the expres- 
sion of some countenances, that they feel the tyranny of 
circumstances which compels them to break in upon the time 
of rest. Let us at least give them due praise for the decent 
feeling which induces them to come at the earliest possible 
hour. 

As we advance up the street, we see the shopkeepers 
busily engaged in displaying their goods to the best advantage 
for sale. Purchasers being as yet but few, opportunity is 
taken to make as good a show as possible against their ar- 
rival. "We are astonished to find that the market is not con- 
fined to what might be considered by some a fair apology for 
it — the sale of necessary food. In addition to the shops of 
butchers, bakers, grocers, and provision dealers, not only are 
those of the slop and ready-made clothes' sellers wide open, 
but the linendrapers, hosiers, milliners, furniture -brokers, iron- 
mongers, and dealers in hardware and trinkets, are carefully 
setting out their windows and show boards. Curriers and 
leather- sellers, moreover, have opened their doors, and are 
already doing a brisk trade, their shops being crowded with 
working shoemakers, selecting the materials of their craft. 
Unless these poor fellows are actually at the present time 
working seven days in the week, it is difficult to conceive what 
should bring them in such multitudes to purchase their ma- 
terials on the Sunday morning. 

But an hour has passed away, and the street, now rapidly 
filling, presents a very different aspect from that which first 



252 cruiosiTiEs of London lite. 

struck our view. The shopkeepers have at length, completed 
their arrangements, and now, standing at their open doors, 
and arrayed in aprons and shirt- sleeves, they begin with pretty 
general accord to bellow for custom. " Buy, buy, buy ! ,! ex- 
plodes a brawny butcher ; and the note is taken up by his 
neighbour, and repeated by others in every direction a hun- 
dred times a minute, rapid and deafening as a running fire of 
musketry. It would appear as though this simultaneous 
appeal to the pockets of the public were a signal well known 
to the neighbourhood, for all the tributaries of Whitecross- 
street now pour forth their streams of hungry, meagre, and 
unwashed denizens, to swell the inharmonious concert. The 
shrill shriek of infant hawkers pierces through the roaring din, 
and the diminutive grimy urchins are discerned manfully 
pushing their difficult way among the throng, bent upon the 
sale of certain trifling articles, upon the produce of which, in 
all probability, their chance of a supply of food for the day is 
dependent. "WTlo'H buy my Congreves, three boxes a 
penny?" "Blacking here! Here's your real Day and 
Martin, a ha'penny a skin!" "Grid — grid — gridirons! 
"Who wants a gridiron for three-halfpence?" " Hingans — 
hingans here ! Here's your hingans, a ha'penny the lot !" 
These cries, and a dozen others, from a band of young urchins 
scattered among the multitude, form the squeaking treble of 
the discordant chorus that is raging on all sides. We dis- 
cover as we pass slowly along that a pretty strong staff of 
policemen is present, perambulating continually among the 
mass of people, ready to disperse the first nucleus of a mob, or 
to quell by prompt interference the least appearance of a 
quarrel. It is plainly owing to their presence that the high- 
way is passable at all, and that some degree of order is main- 
tained amid the furious traffic that now goes on. 

It is now drawing near to ten o'clock, and we are struck by 
the appearance and character of the present attendants upon 
the market as compared with those of an earlier hour. The 



LONDON SUNDAY TEADING. 253 

males are for the most part the very lowest class of operatives, 
mingled with a still lower order of people, of whose probable 
occupation we would rather not hazard a surmise. We look 
in vain for a single one among them who has changed his 
working- day attire for a better suit ; and the suspicion rises 
in the mind that nine- tenths of the whole tribe bear their en- 
tire wardrobe upon their backs. It is pretty plain that a good 
proportion of them have but recently been roused up from the 
heavy sleep of intoxication : half awake, and less than half 
sober, some crawl doggedly at the heels of their hapless wives 
in sullen silence, only broken at intervals by the involuntary 
ejaculation of an oath or a curse. Others, again, are altogether 
as noisy, and vie with the traders themselves in the loud- 
ness of their vociferations. Here one is chaffering for a pair 
of high-lows, and jokingly threatening to brain the shop- 
keeper with the heavy-armed heels, unless he abate his price. 
There another plants heavy blows with his fist in the sides 
of an earthenware pan, by way of trying its metal, and, 
paying for it the price of a few halfpence, confides it to the 
charge of his ragged child, with a caution that he had better 
break his neck than let it fall. Here comes a couple who 
have completed their purchases for the day : the whole toilet 
of the man would not fetch sixpence at Rag-fair. Beneath a 
hat that should have scared the crows of a vanished genera- 
tion, a shock of sandy unkempt locks shades a visage dark 
with dirt, darker still with theunmistakeable traits of brutality; 
a huge brown overcoat, patched and stained in every part, 
endues his whole frame ; his toes peep muddily forth from the 
fragments of what was once a pair of boots. In his bristly 
mouth is stuck a short and blackened pipe ; both hands are 
firmly thrust into the side pockets of his coat ; under his right 
arm is a loaf of bread, and under his left the half of a huge 
boar's head. Close behind him follows his wife, laden with 
a dilapidated basket, crammed with potatoes and withered 
turnip-tops yellow with age. Her figure is one shapeless 



254 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

bundle of worthless rags, stiff and nauseous with grease and 
defilement : bonnet she has none, but a piece of tattered 
muslin does duty as a cap, from beneath which her jet black 
hair streams in disorder. Her pale and bloated cheeks show 
in fearful contrast with a horribly-contused and livid black 
eye — the palpable handwriting of her loving lord. Her 
upper lip too has been recently gashed with a heavy blow. 
Panting with her burthen, and evidently displeased at some 
recent real or imaginary grievance, she is venting her wrath 
upon a miserable child, whom she drags by her side, and whose 
hand she occasionally relinquishes for the purpose of making a 
sudden aim at his bare head with the street-door key, which 
hangs upon her fore -finger ; but the hapless little wretch is 
too well used to such endearments to be easily caught, and 
generally manages to parry the blow with his hands, or to 
elude it altogether. 

We observe as we pass on that the gin-shops are now almost 
the only ones which are closed, and that the portion of the 
causeway upon which they abut, being free from the dis- 
tractions of business, affords a space for loungers and gossips, 
who, having accomplished their purchases, love to while away 
an hour or two in conversation. Time goes on — and the 
bell of St. Luke's church, whose tall, ugly steeple, fashioned 
after the model of a factory chimney, looms dimly in the hazy 
atmosphere, tolls out to summon the worshippers to morning 
service. At the sound of the bell the shopkeepers step out 
and put up a shutter or two, leaving, however, light enough 
to carry on the traffic within. The trade in butchers' meat, 
vegetables, and other edibles, now sensibly decreases in 
amount, while at the same time it is despatched with greater 
rapidity. Parties late in the market are compelled to take 
what is to be had without the leisure or opportunity to exer- 
cise a choice. This is the very nick of time which the pro- 
vident trader adopts to get rid of his old and worthless stock : 
it is said that many a tainted joint finds its way to the bake- 



LONDON SUNDAY TRADING. 255 

house, which, but for the tardiness of these lagging customers, 
had been made over to the dogs, or thrown away as useless ; 
and full prices are obtained at the spur of the moment for 
viands that might have been purchased the night before at 
three-fourths of that amount. 

Before the bells have ceased tolling, the thoroughfare has 
become tolerably passable for those who have no objection to 
rub shoulders occasionally with a perambulating joint of meat 
or basket of vegetables ; but we remark that the very few 
persons who, living in this district, emerge from their dwell- 
ings, prayer-book in hand, bound for church, choose rather 
to escape from the main thoroughfare as soon as possible, and 
pick their devious way through by-lanes and back streets to 
the sacred edifice. 

Now sets in the hebdomadal current of dish-laden indivi- 
duals bound to the different bakers' shops, and carrying their 
Sunday's dinner with careful haste. It is amazing to note 
the number and variety of viands that dive consecutively into 
the darkened entrances ; and one wonders how it comes to 
pass that each of the bearers manages to recover his own 
proper portion when the business of the oven is over. There 
are a prodigious number of them that appear, to an unpractised 
eye, so exactly alike, that the task of distinguishing them 
apart would seem hopeless to one unacquainted with the 
management of the mystery. A very favourite mode of in- 
suring the variety of two courses at the expense of one baking 
prevails very extensively : it is managed in this way : the 
housewife provides a large earthenware dish, about twenty 
inches by fourteen, and three or four deep, having a division 
near the centre ; the potatoes are crammed plentifully in the 
bottom of the larger compartment, and the modest joint rests 
upon them ; the other division is appropriated to the pudding, 
in the manufacture of which we could perceive that a very 
considerable variety of talent had been displayed. 

The bell has now ceased tolling, and the tumultuous uproar 



256 CT7KI0SITIES OP LOXDON LIFE. 

of the market subsides to a moderate murmur. Still the 
traffic is brisk aud abundant in the interior of the shops. 
"We remark those of the grocers and tea-dealers crammed to 
overflowing, and all the assistants behind the counter divested 
of their outer garments, and reeking with heat and hurry, 
weighing, measuring, and packing with consummate despatch. 
The curriers, too, are dealing out soles and upper leathers, 
welts, wax, and paste, with a rapidity rarely equalled on a week- 
day, among the meagre and pallid crowd, who can scarcely 
find standing-room in front of the counter. The drapers' 
shops are swarming with customers of both sexes : caps, bon- 
nets, shawls, handkerchiefs, and ribbons, change owners in a 
twinkling. Lads in fustian jackets are pulling about the 
many- coloured wares, resolved on treating their sweethearts 
with a morsel of finery ; and smartly-dressed lasses are 
matching their pale faces with a strip of paler ribbon, or 
selecting a gaudy neck-tie for some favoured swain. The 
shoemakers and the marts for ready-made clothes have all a 
good share of encouragement, and do an amount of business 
in the Sunday forenoon, according to the candid confession of 
some of their proprietors, exceeding that of any two days in 
the week, Saturday excluded. This in-door traffic continues 
till past noonday ; and the shops are seldom finally closed be- 
fore one o'clock, when the religious part of the community 
are returning from church. The appearance of the whole 
street, when the market is over, resembles very closely the 
deserted arena of a country fair, or Co vent-garden- market 
after business-hours — the ground being one mash of mud and 
decaying vegetable matter. 

We must not omit all mention of the species of literature 
which finds encouragement among the frequenters of the 
Sunday Market. Eooks we saw none, but good store of single 
sheets of all sizes, and varying in price from one halfpenny 
up to sixpence. All the Sunday newspapers are regularly 
placarded and sold; and in addition to them, there was an 



LOXDOX SUNDAY TKADIXG. 257 

abundance of the blood- and-murder, ghost-and-goblin journals, 
embellished for the most part with melodramatic cuts, where 
what was wanting in truth of artistic delineation was plenti- 
fully ma'le up in energy of action. It would seem that there 
is a charm in pistols, daggers, bludgeons, and deadly weapons 
of all sorts, with the assaults and assassinations they suggest, 
that is irresistible to the population of London. ]S"o matter 
how gross the ignorance or stupidity of a writer, so that he 
have but a deed of blood or violence to unfold : a murder is so 
delicious a morsel to the palates of a debased multitude, that 
it imparts a relish to the most intolerable dulness, and invests 
imbecility itself with the attributes of genius and talent. 

The above, though necessarily brief, is, as far as we are 
aware, a truthful delineation of the Sunday Market. Of such 
localities, differing more or less in their primary features, there 
are five or six in the metropolis. ^Vhen we take into account 
the demoralisation that must unavoidably accrue from the total 
neglect of religious duties which the continuance of this prac- 
tice necessarily entails, we cannot but concur in the sentiments 
of those who are striving at the present moment to obtain by 
legal means the power of suppressing it. It is sad to learn, that 
though the great majority of the parties who gain most by this 
ill-favoured traffic are willing, nay, desirous, that it should be 
put an end to at once and for ever, it is yet, through the resist- 
ance of a petty minority, continued in their despite. Pour- 
fifths of the Sunday- traders, we know from indisputable 
authority, would be willing to close their shops from Saturday 
night to Monday morning; but they are compelled in self- 
defence, in order to preserve their average custom, to open on 
the Sunday, because a few stubborn opponents per?ist in so 
doing. The evil is great in a physical as well as a moral point 
of view. Many of the shopmen in the district above-described, 
and in other places, as we are credibly informed, are con- 
fined behind the counter from seven or eight in the morning 
to ten at night the whole week through : to men so situated the 



258 curiosities of loxdox life. 

relaxation of the Sunday is not merely a luxury, but a necessity, 
but from its enjoyment they are debarred by the continuance 
of a practice which cannot be spoken of without regret — and 
loss of health is the general consequence. 

There has been no lack of legislation upon this subject; but 
it is a question whether legislative interference will effect 
much good. The law of Charles II., which would appear upon 
the face of it to be a good and efficient law for the purpose, has 
been found, in working, the next thing to a nullity. It levies 
a fine of five shillings upon the offender ; but as the magistrates 
will not convict for more than one offence in one day, it is prac- 
tically of no avail, as the profits upon one morning's business 
in some of the largest shops is from fifty to a hundred times 
that amount. Moreover, the trader can, and does, when he 
knows that informations are a-foot, reduce the five shillings to 
one shilling by taking out a summons against himself, which 
bars the issue of a second summons, and prevents the disgrace, 
as well as the expense of a hearing, as of course he does not 
appear to criminate himself. 

We would not rashly impute the whole cause of Sunday 
trading to shopkeepers and hucksters. !Not a little of the evil 
arises from a practice of paying weekly wages late on Saturday 
night; and to remedy this every proper effort should be 
directed. Indeed, while such a practice prevails, all legislative 
interference on the subject would be worse than useless. 



259 



THE GRAM) ARMY. 



I "wondek whether the world needs to be told that there is a 
great battle fought in London every day. Such is the case, 
whether they know it or not — a real battle, and no paltry 
raid or affair of outposts, but a contest big with great results, 
greater than most men have the wit to calculate. It is fought 
at considerable cost, too, and remorseless shedding of — ink, 
not blood. The forces engaged are tried and trusty men, and 
nearly one and all may be reckoned as troops of the line (and 
ruler). They are under marching order every day of their 
lives, and have to break up their bivouacs at an early hour 
in the morning, some almost as early as the dawn ; these are 
the light infantry, and they march for the most part in Indian 
file to their several positions on the field of strife ; they may 
be considered generally as occupying the outposts, and not a 
few of them commence skirmishing as early as seven or eight 
o'clock in the day. The grand attack of the combined forces 
does not, however, take place till ten — and up to that hour, 
and perhaps for a few minutes later, (for the best soldiers mis- 
calculate their distance sometimes,) the troops are mustering 
in thousands and tens of thousands from all points of the 
compass. Prom the north and the south, from the east and 
the west, up to the time that Bow Bells ring out ten, "the 
cry is still, they come ! " They come rushing on the iron- 
road at the heels of the fire- steed from quarters, half a dozen 



260 CURIOSITIES OF LOKDON LIFE. 

or a dozen, or a score of miles away; and they come in 
crowded chariots crammed within and crowded without, with 
their militant forces ; and they come in myriads of marching 
foot, throngh high- ways and by-ways, through straight ways 
and crooked ways, through wet ways and dry ways, and 
through long ways and short ways — all nocking to take their 
stand around the Hougomont of commerce, the centre of 
which may he supposed to be the Bank of England. 

It may be remarked, that among this order of fighting men 
there are no cavalry ; they mount no horses ; their chargers 
(and they are famous to a man for charging) are chiefly high 
stools of black leather stuffed with horse-hair. They wield 
weapons proverbially thirsty, and dripping all day long with 
gore, both black and red ; yet they never go to loggerheads, 
though not unfrequently, when the battle goes hard with 
them, they are forced to go to logarithms, and then they are 
cheered on by Napier, not him of the peninsula, but him of 
the pen and the rods and the bones. They sometimes do 
fearful deeds in self-defence with a dash of their weapon ; 
with one scratch of its sharp point a single trooper shall shake 
down a proud house which has stood haughtily for genera- 
tions, and crumble it to ruin more hopeless by far than though 
it had been a target for all Napoleon's cannon. Another has 
but to point his weapon to the east or the west, and off at the 
signal go a hundred men and a thousand tons of goods under 
a cloud of swelling canvas, on a twelve months' voyage to 
circumnavigate the globe. A third wags for a moment his 
goose- quill spear, and incontinently a thousand iron machines, 
which had stood idle for months, start into activity with a 
roar and a clatter that never pause or relax for, it may be, 
half a year together. A fourth, with point of polished steel, 
makes a few cabalistic signs, and, lo and behold ! no sooner 
does Poh Chin Long, the millionaire of the celestial empire, 
get an inkling of it, which he does very soon, than he and 
his are in such a state of excitement and bustle that their 



THE GHAND ABJIY. 261 

long tails are seen streaming hither and thither in the wind, 
and the pressure of business is such that all possibility of a 
miserable debauch with opium is imperatively postponed till 
that barbarian Bull has got his tea. Such are a few of the 
common doings of the great army of clerks who fight the 
fight of commerce every day in London — with the exception 
of Sundays, and some few other welcome days set apart for 
rest — the whole year through. 

He who would witness the matutinal gathering of this 
great army — and it is not an uninteresting sight — should 
rise betimes, and, having fortified himself with an early break- 
fast, direct his steps leisurely towards the Royal Exchange as 
the hour of gathering approaches. If, as he had better do, 
he starts from the suburbs, he will notice the early " buses' ' 
diverging from their customary routes, that is, the routes they 
travel during the rest of the day — and rousing with the 
sound of horn Johnson and Jackson, and Thomson and Dick- 
son, and Richardson and Robinson, and Davidson and Jamieson, 
and Jenkinson and every mother's son of mighty Father Com- 
merce, from their hot toast and cool watercresses and cosy 
fire-side breakfasts — drawing them out as with a magnet 
from their open street-doors, and receiving them in their capa- 
cious stomachs or on top of their broad backs, and bowling 
off with them towards the city. He will see others, a few 
minutes later, crossing now to this side of the road, now over 
again to that — " cutting " with a rough warning blast " tan- 
tara-ra-ra " up this turning to the right, and down the other 
to the left — pulling up at Smith's with a sharp sudden jerk 
to a dead stop, to enable him safely to deposit his seventeen 
stone with precautionary gravity, or barely slackening speed 
at the vision of Jones, who with the agility of a harlequin 
shoots himself into the farthest corner, carelessly ejaculating 
" All right ! " as he takes his headlong flight. He will notice 
the conclusive "bang" with which the conductor jams to the 
door as he delivers himself of the satisfactory verdict, " Full 



262 CUELOSITLES OF LONDON LIFE. 

inside ! " and will hardly fail to remark the aristocratic air 
with which both driver and conductor of the "bus " ignore 
altogether the eager gesticulations of the unfortunate Brown, 
who, already behind his time, frantically hails the unheeding 
driver, who with unbroken persistency rolls on regardless. 

Besides the charioteers, he will notice the crowds of travel- 
lers on foot, and the accommodation provided for them by the 
morning crossing-sweepers, whose especial harvest has to be 
reaped at these morning hours, and who know full well their 
regular patrons, and acknowledge each one as he appears, 
accordingly, with a fraction of a salaam and a scratch of the 
ground with their broom- stumps. If he be a person of ob- 
servation, he may discriminate unerringly between the man 
who has seized time by the forelock and him whom time is 
impatiently goading with the sharp point of his scythe. He 
may tell, too, the status, almost the actual salary, of every 
hired soldier in this numerous army, from the mere youth, 
just escaped from school, who with a solatium of a few pounds 
a year is feeling his way to promotion and a permanent stool, 
to him of three or four hundred a year, or perhaps more, who 
has got the world under his foot. He may note the unde- 
niable gentility, the leisurely, half lordly promenading step 
of the confidential manager, the conscience-keeper, as it were, 
of the thriving merchant, whose word or whose signature is 
as good as that of his principal ; and he may contrast him 
with the hard-working drudge who, with a sickly wife and 
seven small children, in that mildewy cottage down in Ber- 
mondsey, is obliged to squeeze a genteel appearance out of 
very vulgar pay, and with the very best principles is yet 
obliged to play the turncoat because he cannot afford to pa- 
tronize the tailor. He may see a great deal more if he look 
sharp, but he must not be long about it, because the scene 
changes as the clock strikes ten ; in a few minutes the clerks 
are housed, the empty omnibuses roll off, and the grand army 
mounted on their stools are doing bloodless battle with all 



THE GRAND ARMY. 263 

nations of the earth — a friendly strife in which all are to be 
victors and gainers, save the idle and unprincipled, who shrink 
from the contest altogether, or, accepting it, fight with 
unlawful weapons. 

So large an army of course needs a corresponding commis- 
sariat. Of the immense host that flock around the standard 
of commerce in the morning, some four-fifths, it has been cal- 
culated, heroically dine upon the field. Hence, wherever 
there is plenty of commerce in London, there also is plenty 
of cookery. The prices current in the city quote hot joints, 
pigeon pies, roast goose, cold sirloin and pickles, etc. etc., for 
this day's consumption, as well as corn, flour, bere, bigg, 
gutta percha, caoutchouc and indigo, and all the etceteras of 
the home and foreign markets. In the quiet back streets, 
roosting in the rear of the main thoroughfares of traffic, a 
thousand hospitable boards are spread with viands inviting to 
the casual passer-by, and of known and % well-appreciated 
savour to the regular customer. Here, for a consideration, 
the unbearded youth from the boarding-school may speculate 
in unknown dishes, and the pampered gastronome discharge 
his critical verdict as to the culinary talent of the landlord's 
chef -de- cuisine. Enter any one of these resorts at a hungry 
moment — say any time between two and five o'clock in the 
afternoon — and if the love of order, of good cheer, and of 
well-bred company reside in your breast, and your olfactories 
be susceptible of persuasion by unimpeachable odours, you 
may chance to find yourself in an atmosphere of complacent 
comfortableness highly favourable to the important process of 
digestion. You will see, if you have not been unhappy in 
your choice of a dining -house, that the march of modern im- 
provement has entered the cook-shop and transformed it into 
the salon- d-manger of our lively and luxurious neighbours 
across the Channel. It is literally a cook-shop no longer ; the 
kitchen, with its compound of steaming and heterogeneous 
flavours, so disappetizing to the nervous sedentary employee, 



264 CUKI0SIT1ES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

is banished in toto from the place. Perhaps near a hundred 
members of the grand army are seated quietly ronnd the snow- 
white table-cloths discussing at leisure the savoury meats or the 
delicate pastry, while the stilly hum of subdued voices in con- 
versation, mingled with the clatter of knives and forks, and 
the occasional clink of glasses, are the only sounds that are 
heard. There is no scrambling of waiters, nor rushing of 
unctuous cook-maids either this way or that : a few polite 
young fellows with ever- watchful eyes, and feet noiselessly 
alert, present the bills of fare to the new comers as fast as 
they take their seats, receive their orders and transmit them, 
in accents which seldom reach your ear, through an acoustic 
tube to the regions below. In a few minutes, almost before 
you have time to bespeak the Daily News after that gentle- 
man in green spectacles has done with it, the magical per- 
formances of Aladdin's wonderful lamp are repeated before 
your eyes : the genii below have obeyed the talismanic charm, 
and the desiderated dishes rise out of the ground "hot and 
hot" and anxious to be eaten. You may repeat the conjura- 
tion as often as you like, and if an experiment in roast beef 
should fail in convincing you that the thing was fairly done, 
why you can make another in plum-pudding ; and should any 
lingering scepticism yet overshadow your perceptivities, (as 
the author of the " History of the Anglo-Saxons" has it,) 
you may possibly come to a sound and definite conclusion by 
a third experiment in custard. Having finished your dinnep, 
and diluted the gastric juice with a crystal draught from St. 
Antholin's pump — for water is here in much repute as a 
beverage — you can cast your eye over the newspaper, and 
digest the leading article along with the sirloin, and when 
finally recruited both in body and mind, you take your de- 
parture. As you go out you pay ; the landlord or his deputy 
meets you with a polite bow in the ante-room, and receives 
your money; he presents you with no account; he keeps 
none against you ; he has perfect faith that the whole grand 



THE GKRAKD ARMY. 265 

army of clerks could hardly furnish a personage so mean who 
would rise from his hospitable board with a lie upon his lips, 
in order to defraud him of his dues. So you tell him what 
you have eaten, and he tells you what you have to pay ; and 
the probability is, if you be a reasonable man and a stranger 
to this sort of accommodation, that you are very much sur- 
prised that for such a thing, say, as sixteen-pence, you have 
dined so comfortably and so well. 

Houses of this description — and they are more numerous 
than a stranger to the city would be apt to imagine — owe 
their existence to the grand army. "Without it they might 
extinguish their fires and discharge their staffs ; when it dis- 
bands, which it does for the most part at six o'clock in the 
evening, and partly an hour earlier, the landlords may count 
their gains and prepare measures for the exigencies of the 
next day. The disbanding, by the way, of the commercial 
host is not nearly so noticeable an event as its gathering. 
The clerks do not affect a monopoly of the omnibuses in the 
evening ; thousands of them, it is true, return home by that 
never-failing convenience, but thousands more devote their 
long evenings to pursuits and pleasures the appliances to which 
abound more in the city than in the suburbs. If some, lovers 
of home and home comforts, seek their own firesides in win- 
ter, in preference to all other allurements — and their own 
garden patches in summer, where the one rose-tree bears a 
blighted rose, the one gooseberry-bush bears no gooseberries, 
and the one vine never does anything more than promise 
grapes — an equal number at least seek a recompense for the 
toils of the day in recreations of a less healthful character. 

The working-man who labours unremittingly from early 
morning till eight or nine at night is apt to imagine that the 
commercial clerk leads a very easy life, inasmuch as for the 
greater part of the year he has his long evenings at his own 
disposal. The supposition is not entirely a correct one, be- 
cause there is no comparison between the labours of a clerk in 



266 emtio si iies of loxdox life. 

a responsible office, and those of a merely mechanical descrip- 
tion. In matters of this sort things are very apt to find their 
own level ; the faculties of the mind cannot be taxed for the 
same length of time as those of the body. A sedentary thinker 
who works seven or eight hours a day, in all likelihood makes 
a greater demand upon his vital energies than the handicrafts- 
man who toils from rise to set of sun. Had the case been far 
otherwise, the fact would have been discovered long ere this, 
and a different balance struck. The object of most com- 
mercial regulations is not (we sometimes wish it were) to pro- 
vide leisure for the workman, but to secure effective work 
from him ; and we may take it for granted that that end has 
been kept in view as much in the clerk's case as in the day- 
labourer's. At the same time there is no denying that the 
clerk is favourably situated for the development of any peculiar 
talent with which he may have been endowed. The history 
of literature and the arts would supply abundant proof of 
this. "We could point to eminent painters whose works are 
the admiration of the world — to musicians whose delightful 
strains bewitch the air, and charm the ear of millions — to 
poets and to literary men whose productions are read with 
avidity — all of whom once sat doggedly on the high leather 
stool, and manfully shed their ink like water in the cause of 
commerce. We shall content ourselves with adverting to one, 
the prince of literary clerks, poor Charles Lamb, for whom 
there will be a smile and a tear so long as English literature 
endures. Of his clerkly career there is a characteristic story 
told. He was in the habit too often of making his appearance 
late in the morning — too late for office hours. On one occa- 
sion his superior remonstrated with him candidly on the sub- 
ject. Poor Charles, taken by surprise, replied with much 
naivete : " True, my dear sir, true, I do sometimes come in late, 
but then you know I always go away early" We must close 
our article here. Anything we can say will sound but flat 
and tame after this. 



267 



THE "BIG" SALE, 



The reader must suppose it to be the dull time of the London 
year. London is, in fact, gone out of town, all but those un- 
fortunates who, lacking the sinews of locomotion — surplus cash 
— have nothing to go with, and therefore nowhere to go to. 
The west end stands in stately silence ; the tall rows of lordly 
residences blink darkly at each other through closed window- 
shutters ; the broad pavements, glittering in the autumn sun, 
yield not an echo save to the plodding footfall of the milkman 
or the pot-boy. 

" No trampling of horses, no rumbling of wheels, 
No noise on the pavement of gentlemen's heels," 

disturbs the cogitations of the dreamy porter, who, having 
forsaken his cavern of buckram in the hall, ruminates cosily 
by the kitchen fire upon the two things which are inseparable 
in his catalogue of human vicissitudes — the sea-side and 
board-wages. 

With the absence of fashion in the west the tradesman's 
function in the east correspondingly declines. In the Strand 
business has run aground, and desperate attempts are making 
to get it afloat again. Holborn is hipped, and stands at its 
front door, rubbing its brows, and pulling melancholy faces. 
Cheapside is now cheaper than ever, and strains with agonizing 
puffs to swell the canvas of traffic, and get the bark of com- 
merce again under weigh. The less-frequented resorts of 

n2 



268 CURIOSITIES OE LONDON" LIEE. 

trade are still worse off : in the second and third-rate thorough- 
fares the forlorn dealers are at their wits' end. They publish 
desperate announcements, and cry aloud through the press, 
though in less candid phrase, " Take my goods, oh take my 
goods, at any price you will — twenty, thirty, forty, fifty per 
cent, under prime cost — no matter what the fearful sacrifice 
— ruin me, or ruin my creditors, but grant me your custom, 
or I die." It is all of no use. The crowds that hurry past 
are of the wrong sort — money-seekers, not money-spenders : 
retail trade is at its last gasp. There is nothing for it but a 
" Rig," and a Rig is resolved upon. 

Some fine morning Higgins the broker, telling the boy to 
take charge of the shop during his absence, jams his crumpled 
beaver over his unkempt locks, and thrusting his hands into 
his breeches' pockets, strolls out in a mood half melancholy, 
half savage, and looks in upon Wiggins the house-agent. 

"How are you, "Wiggins," says he, "and how's business 
with you?" 

" Ho call to ask anybody that there question these here 
times, Mr. Higgins," says "Wiggins; "most dreadful slack it 
is surely. Anything up ?" 

" Why, there is summut in the wind — leastways if you're 
agreeable, else I 'spose it aint no go." 

" The old dodge I expect?" 

" Why, not 'xactly ; I seen Crossbar, and Pops, and 
Daubins, and Brittle last night, and all on us come to a noo 
plan. We means to have the Rig complete this time — least- 
ways if you're agreeable, as I said afore." 

" Well, I shan't hinder business, if you mean business ; so 
let's hear ?" 

" Well, then, harn't you got a willar to let in St. John's 
Wood ?" 

" To be sure I have ; what then ?" 

" Harn't it got stables in the back as opens in a mooze ?" 

" That's just it ; what more ?" 



<( T,™ " 



THE " KIG SALE. 269 

""Why, then, the question is, will yon let ns have that 
there willar for a few weeks, and what's yonr flgger?" 

As Wiggins has taken an oath against hindering business 
of any sort, and as the proprietor of the villa in requisition is 
an old lady at present retrenching in the south of France, it 
may be easily imagined that there are no insurmountable im- 
pediments to the conclusion of the bargain. Higgins having 
settled thus much, and obtained the key of the premises, 
proceeds to call upon his coadjutors in the Eig to play their 
several parts. Crossbar is an ironmonger, cutler, and hard- 
wareman, and sends in fenders, fire-irons, kitchen-ware, 
cutlery, and bronze ornaments, &c. &c. Higgins himself 
carpets the rooms with second-hand Brussels, and crowds 
every chamber with a plethora of showy furniture — taking 
good care to prevent the ingress of too much light by a full 
depth of cornice, and abundance of damask drapery to the 
windows. Brittle, who is a chinaman, inundates the cupboards 
and sideboards with a flood of china and glass, made expressly 
for sale by auction, or for emigrants' uses. Pops, who is a 
pawnbroker in a large way of business, contributes the linen, 
an exuberant quantity of which is generally one of the 
characteristics of the Big Sale. Be happens to have on hand, 
on the present occasion, a good stock of plate of all descrip- 
tions, run out at old silver price, marked with an engraved 
crest, and the initials A. E. E. Epergnes, candelabras, tea and 
coffee services, spoons, and forks, with salvers and waiters to 
match, all are packed off to the " willar;" and a goodly show 
they make, spread forth upon Higgins' s telescope dining- 
tables. Daubins, who is a picture-dealer in Wardour Street, 
takes the measure of the walls, and fills every available space 
with some " exquisite gem of art," manufactured in Brompton 
or Newman Street scarce a twelvemonth since, but figuring in 
the catalogue of the Eig Sale as the " choicest productions of 
the Italian, Spanish, Flemish, and English schools." 

In three days the house is stuffed full from top to bottom 



270 curiosities of London life. 

with everything that the most pampered selfishness could 
suggest, or wealth procure, all brought in under cover of the 
night, through the stables in the back, to prevent the suspicion 
of observant neighbours. £Tow appears a pompous advertise- 
ment in the daily papers, announcing the choicest effects 
(among which are included a thousand ounces of plate, and an 
unequalled collection of cabinet gems of art) of the Honourable 
Augustus Fitz-Flighaway, deceased, whose unimpeachable 
judgment, and liberal expenditure in amassing them are, it is 
added, well known in the world of fashion. The auctioneer, 
if not a member of the Rig, as is frequently the case, is at 
most a man of third-rate respectability in his profession, and 
receives a stated sum for his day's labour, in lieu of a per- 
centage on the amount sold, which is generally charged. A 
large-type quarto catalogue is industriously circulated in the 
neighbourhood, and a few are despatched to Brighton, Hastings, 
and other marine resorts, whence the senders frequently receive 
commissions to purchase at the sale, at an exaggerated price, 
articles which had lain for years in their shops unsold. 

At length the day of sale has arrived. Fathoms of stair- 
carpeting, studded with placards, hang trailing from the 
windows from an early hour in the morning, as an indication 
to all concerned that the day of business has dawned. The 
auctioneer on the present occasion is Mr. Snumns of Seven 
Dials. Elevated on a chair placed on one end of the long 
dining-tables in the front parlour, the folding-doors of which 
have been removed from their hinges to throw the whole floor 
into one, the dark-muzzled orator, first treating the assembled 
public to a full view of his Blucher-booted heels through the 
legs of the little table in front of him, prepares to open the 
business. But before reciting his address, let us take a brief 
glance at the company. Higgins, Daubins, Crossbar, Pops, 
and Brittle, occupy five chairs in the first row, immediately 
under the eye of the auctioneer at his left. "Wiggins, and an 
agent or two besides, are stationed at the other end of the 



it T.T^ » 



THE "eig sale. 271 

room ; so that the assembly of lona-fide bidders are enclosed 
between them. Seated on chairs originally placed in rows, 
but now jostled in characteristic confusion, are thirty or forty 
respectable persons of both sexes, who have come with the 
praiseworthy intention of profiting by the decease of the 
Honourable Augustus Fitz-Flighaway. Upon the sofas, 
ranged on either side of the long tables in front of the 
auctioneer, are a still more select party, whose fashionable 
garb and demeanour have aroused the watchful politeness of 
the auctioneer's clerk, who has escorted them to seats at the 
table. Lounging about the doorway, and chattering occa- 
sionally with Wiggins, or one of his gang of touters, are some 
half-dozen furniture- brokers of the neighbourhood, not come 
with the view of purchasing — the Rig is as palpable to them 
as the sea is to a sailor — but induced by curiosity to see how 
it will go off, or to calculate the chance of profit from a 
similar experiment on their own account. 

But the voice of Snuifins in alt is now heard above the 
murmur of conversation. " Xow, then, gentlemen, yonder at 
that end of the room, silence, if you please : we are agoing 
to begin. Silence, let me beg, if you please {three hangs with 
his hammer). Ladies and gentlemen, these here heffects of 
the Horrible Augustus Fitz-Flighaway is, I 'spose, perfeckly 
well known to you, seein' the time they've abin on view. 
ITany on you, I have no doubt (the rascal), who was hintimate 
with that celebrated person afore he deceased hisself, now 
reckonizes for the last time many a moniment of his indis- 
pensible taste and hexpensive disposition.' , (Here the orator 
attempts to draw up his right leg to the usual sitting- posture, 
and in so doing raises one side of the little table, and upsets 
his inkstand, the contents of which trickle down in a stream 
upon the head of his clerk, who is occupied for the next half- 
hour in conveying it by means of his middle finger to the back 
of his waistcoat.) "But, ladies and gentlemen, there aint no 
reason that this should be the last time that your eyes should 



272 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDO^ LITE. 

look on what's here. Every blessed lot on it is to be sold for 
just whot you chooses to give for it : there aint no reserve, 
and no favour. I needn't say that this is a hopportunity as 
don't happen every day, and aint likely to come again in a 
hurry. All I know is, that I should think it a good hundred 
pounds in my pocket if I could be a buyer to-day instead of 
a seller. These here remarks said and done, we will, if you 
please, proceed to the first lot." 

With that up goes a wooden rocking-horse, which had been 
in Higgins's garret for the last three years ; and after gal- 
loping up from ten shillings to three pound ten, is knocked 
down to Hiss Clementina Botherbeau — a spinster of fifty-four, 
who has not a relation in the world under the age of twenty, 
but who would have it as a relic of the Hon. A. P. I\, whom 
she has an idea she must have known and admired, though 
she cannot exactly recal his image to her mind. 

As the lots are successively put up, they are started at 
moderate sums by the disinterested worthies in the front row 
of chairs ; helped onwards towards the figure at which they 
stand doomed in the auctioneer's catalogue by the clique at 
the other end of the room; and, the limits agreed on once 
passed, are left to the competition of the public, who are not 
in the secret. Those which cannot by any means be pushed 
up to the price fixed, are bought in by their several owners, 
or their agents, to be removed at the end of the sale "back to 
the place from whence they came." The commissions are 
managed in a summary manner. The lots are rapidly run up 
to the price the absent principal will give : if they fetch 
more, they go to the person bidding more; if they are 
knocked down to the commissioned agent, who is often the 
owner, he gets for the articles the price at which they are 
sold, plus the commission, which, by a somewhat anomalous 
regulation, is generally a per-centage upon the amount paid for 
the lots. 

But let us listen again to Snufiins. The furniture, we will 



the "kig" sale. 273 

suppose, is all sold, and the pictures come next. Half-a- 
dozen time-tinted connoisseurs have entered the room within 
the last quarter of an hour, and found seats near the table, 
the ladies having departed. 

Snuffins loquitur. The first work of hart, ladies and gentle- 
men, which I shall submit to your attention, is a reg'lar 
hex-quiz-it jim of Ten-years, a real shoved- over (meaning to 
say chef-cVceuvre), as the catalogue properly expresses it I'm 
give to understand private that it was bought by the Horrible 
A. F. F. agin Louis-Philippe, at the great sale in Paris as 
come off nine year ago. What do you say for this unparal- 
leled production of Ten-years? Fifty guineas, shall I say, 
ladies and gentlemen ? I beg your pardon, gentlemen — gen- 
tlemen only — the ladies is all gone — bless their liberal arts ! 
— we shall have them again to-morrow, when the plate, and 
the linen, and the cheyny comes on. What shall I say, 
gentlemen, for the sperlative Ten-years ? Forty guineas, 
shall I say ? 

A Voice. Two pounds. 

" Two pounds did you say? Yery well, thank you, sir; 
anything to begin with — Two pounds.' ' 

Daubins. Three pounds. 

Wiggins. Three ten. 

Daubins nods. 

Snuffins. Four pounds. 

An Old Gentleman. Five pounds. (The settled price : a 
dead silence.) 

Second Old Gentleman. Let me see the picture — (Takes off 
spectacles, and peers at it closely) — Guineas. 

Snuffins. Five guineas ; selling at Hve — dead cheap at fifty. 

The picture is ultimately knocked down at ten guineas to 
the first real bidder, having been painted from a print under 
Daubins' s direction six months before, at a cost of not more 
than forty shillings. Had it been the picture it pretended to 
be, it would have fetched at a genuine sale, or at the " knock- 

n 3 



274 CTJBIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

out " which customarily follows a genuine sale, at least from 
two to three hundred pounds. The Teniers is succeeded by a 
Hobbima, that by a Correggio, that by a Wilson, and that again 
by a Hurillo, and so on till the catalogue is gone through, 
there being not one specimen in the whole batch which would 
answer any end better than that of showing the total want of 
judgment or knowledge of art in the purchaser. 

The confederates are well pleased with the result of the 
first day's exploits. Daubins and Higgins are in high spirits. 
Crossbar shows his metal by proposing an extemporaneous 
supper on the premises, and a jollification is got up in the 
kitchen. Pops, whose profit is yet in perspective, is not quite 
so elate, and takes care to be temperate in his libations, that 
the morrow may not find him off his guard, Brittle, too, re- 
mains sober as a judge, and compares notes with Pops, and 
they arrange plans of mutual co-operation for the morrow. 
Daubins and Higgins get " drunk on the premises," to the 
great scandal of the other three, and especially of Crossbar, 
who, being proof against any quantity of " heavy," wonders 
what such fellows can be made of. An admonition from the 
policeman, who is attracted to the house by their noise, at 
length reminds the party that they are in a different region 
from Broker Row ; and after " one glass more," or rather one 
more " pull" at the pewter-pot (for Brittle is too good a judge 
to allow his glass to be made use of), they break up, and 
betake themselves to their several homes. 

The second day's sale is even as the first, and still more 
productive. The experienced Snuffins had not miscalculated 
the " liberal arts" of the ladies. The china and glass, the 
linen and the plate of the Honourable Augustus Pitz-Flighaway 
becomes a perfect rage among the housekeepers of the neigh- 
bourhood. " As every lady," says the presiding orator, " is 
by nater a judge of these ere har tides, there aint no necessity 
for any remarks about 'em on my part. I puts 'em up and 
knocks 'em down; you, ladies, gives what you likes for 'em, 



the "rig" sale. 275 

and has 'em. That's the long and the short of it." "With 
this elegant exordium the business of the day commences. 
Under the patronage of the fair it goes on prosperously and 
well. Pops' s second-hand linen brings him almost the price 
of new : the plate upon which he lent a fraction under five 
shillings an ounce, runs up to seven or eight, or even more. 
Now and then a lot is bought by a gentleman, and even a few 
are bought in by the owners, but the bulk of the articles find 
female purchasers, and either go to swell the list of bargains 
for which the buyers have no mortal use, or, being subjected 
to wear and tear, to prove the fallacious judgment of the 
excited bidders. The "real china" of Brittle, which all 
came overland from the home potteries, is bought up as a 
rarity; and the glass — which to be kept at all must be kept 
cool, as the ceremony of tempering has been omitted in its 
manufacture — is an object of strong competition among the 
fair householders, it being just the one thing of which no 
lady that we ever yet heard of was known to possess enough. 
The effects of the supposititious deceased honourable are at 
length all disposed of, to the no small delectation of the con- 
coctors of the Big. A profit, varying from twenty to fifty 
per cent., has been realised by each of them, and they all 
unanimously declare that this time it was a " decent go, and 
no mistake." But it is not always that the Big runs so pro- 
sperous a course. Though often highly productive, it is yet 
looked upon as a desperate measure. Sometimes, if the 
promoters are in bad odour among their brethren of the trade, 
an angry rival, or an excluded would-be participator, will 
expose the trick before half-a-dozen lots are sold, and he has 
either to be bribed to silence, or the thing becomes a failure. 
The Big occasionally fails too from want of judgment in the 
selection of a proper locality for the experiment ; not unfre- 
quently less than ten per cent, of the lots are sold to real 
bidders; and in some instances, for which we could vouch, 
the amount of goods sold has not paid the auctioneer's eharge 
for selling, to say nothing of other unavoidable expenses. 



276 CURIOSITIES OE LONDON LIFE. 

Sometimes the Eig is only partial — that is, it is confined to 
one or two rooms, or to a certain species of goods. In these 
cases it is curious to witness the perplexity of the brokers 
who happen not to be in the secret. That the Eig is being 
worked they know well enough from certain unmistakeable 
symptoms ; that the whole is not a Eig they also know, from 
the number of knockers-out who are present, and they never 
venture upon a bidding until the desired information is 
obtained. Sometimes the first-floor front is a Eig ; some- 
times the two-pair back. Frequently the plate is rigged; 
more frequently the pictures. The watchful observer at a 
sale may detect the Eig portion of it from the demeanour of 
the regular buyers during its course. ~No sooner does the dis- 
posal of the Eig plant commence, than the whole fraternity of 
dealers contemptuously and manifestly ignore it altogether, 
those personally interested only excepted, and the lots are left 
to the competition of the unsuspecting public, whose courage 
receives an occasional fillip from the owners of the property or 
their agents ; and it is not till the last Eig lot is knocked 
down, that the men of business condescend to bestow a glance 
at the auctioneer, or to listen to his repeated calls for silence, 
as the noise from their gossipping groups interrupts his 
proceedings. 

It is hardly necessary to state that from respectable auc- 
tioneers, men of character and integrity, the Eig receives no 
countenance. If, indeed, the choice collections of valuables 
of every description, gathered together by men of wealth and 
taste, who have devoted their lives to the task, were allowed 
to be tampered with and adulterated by the addition of any 
trumpery from the stocks of ignorant and peculant dealers, 
the public would have no guarantee for the genuineness of 
anything they bought. The Eig is born of stagnation of 
trade, and dies a natural death when commerce becomes brisk, 
and the demand for things saleable returns to its accustomed 
level. 



277 



PUFF AND PUSH. 



It is said that everything is to be had in London. There is 
truth enough in the observation; indeed, rather too much. 
The conviction that everything is to be had, whether you are 
in want of it or not, is forced upon you with a persistence 
that becomes oppressive ; and you find that, owing to every- 
thing being so abundantly plentiful, there is one thing which 
is not to be had, do what you will, though you would like to 
have it if you could — and that one thing is just one day's 
exemption from the persecutions of Puff in its myriad shapes 
and disguises. But it is not to be allowed; all the agencies 
that will work at all are pressed into the service of pushing 
and puffing traffic ; and we are fast becoming, from a nation 
of shopkeepers, a nation in a shop. If you walk abroad, it is 
between walls swathed in puffs; if you are lucky enough to 
drive your gig, you have to " cut in and out " between square 
vans of crawling puffs ; if, alighting, you cast your eyes upon 
the ground, the pavement is stencilled with puffs ; if in an 
evening stroll you turn your eye towards the sky, from a 
paper balloon the clouds drop puffs. You get into an 
omnibus, out of the shower, and find yourself among half a 
score of others, buried alive in puffs ; you give the conductor 
sixpence, and he gives you three pennies in change, and you 
are forced to pocket a puff, or perhaps two, stamped indelibly 
on the copper coin of the realm. You wander out into the 



278 cmnosiTiES of lo^dox life. 

country, but the puffs have gone thither before you, turn in 
what direction you may ; and the green covert, the shady 
lane, the barks of columned beeches and speckled birches, of 
gnarled oaks and rugged elms — no longer the mysterious 
haunts of nymphs and dryads, who have been driven far away 
by the omnivorous demon of the shop — are all invaded by 
Puff, and subdued to the office of his ministering spirits. 
Puff, in short, is the monster megatherium of modern society, 
who runs rampaging about the world, his broad back in the 
air, and his nose on the ground, playing all sorts of ludicrous 
antics, doing very little good, beyond filling his own insa- 
tiable maw, and nobody knows how much mischief in accom- 
plishing that. 

Push is an animal of a different breed, naturally a thorough- 
going, steady, and fast-trotting hack, who mostly keeps in the 
Queen's highway, and knows where he is going. Unfortu- 
nately, he is given to break into a gallop now and then ; and 
whenever in this vicious mood, is pretty sure to take up with 
Puff, and the two are apt to make wild work of it when they 
scamper abroad together. The worst of it is, that nobody 
knows which is which of these two termagant tramplers : 
both are thoroughly protean creatures, changing shapes and 
characters, and assuming a thousand different forms every 
day ; so that it is a task all but impossible to distinguish one 
from the other. Hence a man may get upon the back of 
either without well knowing whither he will be carried, or 
what will be the upshot of his journey. 

Dropping our parable, and leaving the supposed animals to 
run their indefinite career, let us take a brief glance at some 
of the curiosities of the science of Puffing and Pushing — for 
both are so blended, that it is impossible to disentangle one 
from the other — as it is carried on at the present hour in the 
metropolis. 

The business of the shopkeeper, as well as of all others who 
have goods to sell, is of course to dispose of his wares as 



PUFF AJTD PUSH. 279 

rapidly as possible, and in the dearest market. This market 
he has to create, and he must do it in one of two ways; 
either he must succeed in persuading the public, by some 
means or other, that it is to their advantage to deal with him, 
or he must wait patiently and perseyeringly until they have 
found that out, which they will inevitably do if it is a fact. 
]S"o shop ever pays its expenses, as a general rule, for the first 
ten or twenty months, unless it be literally crammed down 
the public throat by the instrumentality of the press and the 
hoarding ; and it is therefore a question, whether it is cheaper 
to wait for a business to grow up, like a young plant, or to 
force it into sudden expansion by artificial means. "When a 
business is manageable by one or two hands, the former expe- 
dient is the better one, and as such is generally followed, 
after a little preliminary advertising, to apprise the neigh- 
bourhood of its whereabouts. But when the proprietor has 
an army of assistants to maintain and to salarise, the case is 
altogether different ; the expense of waiting, perhaps for a 
couple of years, would swallow up a large capital. On this 
account, he finds it more politic to arrest the general attention 
by a grand stir in all quarters, and some obtrusive demonstra- 
tion palpable to all eyes, which shall blazon his name and 
pretensions through every street and lane of mighty London. 
Sometimes it is a regiment of foot, with placarded banners; 
sometimes one of cavalry, with bill-plastered vehicles and 
bands of music ; sometimes it is a phalanx of bottled human- 
ity, crawling about in labelled triangular phials of wood, 
corked with woful faces; and sometimes it is all these together, 
and a great deal more besides. By this means he conquers 
reputation, as a despot sometimes carries a throne, by a coup 
d'etat, and becomes a celebrity at once to the million, among 
whom his name is infinitely better known than those of the 
greatest benefactors of mankind. All this might be tolerable 
enough if it ended here ; but, unhappily, it does not. Experi- 
ment has shown that, just as gudgeons will bite at anything 



280 CUEIOSITIES OE LONDON LIFE. 

when the mud is stirred up at the bottom of their holes, so 
the ingenuous public will lay out their money with anybody 
who makes a prodigious noise and clatter about the bargains 
he has to give. The result of this discovery is, the wholesale 
daily publication of lies of most enormous calibre, and their 
circulation, by means which we shall briefly notice, in local- 
ities where they are likely to prove most productive. 

The advertisements in the daily or weekly papers, the 
placards on the walls or hoardings, the perambulating vans and 
banner-men, and the doomed hosts of bottle-imps and extin- 
guishers, however successful each may be in attracting the 
gaze and securing the patronage of the multitude, fail, for the 
most part, of enlisting the confidence of a certain order of 
customers, who, having plenty of money to spend, and a con- 
siderable share of vanity to work upon, are among the most 
hopeful fish that fall into the shopkeeper's net. These are 
the female members of a certain order of families — the ami- 
able and genteel wives and daughters of the commercial 
aristocracy, and their agents, of this great city. They reside 
throughout the year in the suburbs : they rarely read the 
newspapers ; it would not be genteel to stand in the streets 
spelling over the bills on the walls; and the walking and 
riding equipages of puffing are things decidedly low in their 
estimation. They must, therefore, be reached by some other 
means; and these other means are before us as we write, in 
the shape of a pile of circular-letters in envelopes of all sorts 
— plain, hot-pressed, and embossed; with addresses — some 
in manuscript, and others in print — some in a gracefully gen- 
teel running-hand, and others decidedly and rather obtrusively 
official in character, as though emanating from government 
authorities — each and all, however, containing the bait which 
the lady-gudgeon is expected to swallow. Before proceeding 
to open a few of them for the benefit of the reader, we must 
apprise him of a curious peculiarity which marks their deli- 
very. Whether they come by post, as the major part of them 



PUFF AND PUSH. 281 

do, not a few of them requiring a double stamp, or whether 
they are delivered by hand, one thing is remarkable — they 
always come in the middle of the day, between the hours of 
eleven in the forenoon and five in the afternoon, when, as a 
matter of course, the master of the house is not in the way. 
Never, by any accident, does the morning-post, delivered in 
the suburbs between nine and ten, produce an epistle of this 
kind. Let us now open a few of them, and learn from their 
contents what is the shopkeeper's estimate of the gullibility of 
the merchant's wife, or his daughter, or of the wife or daughter 
of his managing clerk. 

The first that comes to hand is addressed thus: "No. 
2795. — declaeative notice. — From the Times, August 15, 
1851." The contents are a circular, handsomely printed on 
three crowded sides of royal quarto glazed post, and containing 
a list of articles for peremptory disposal, under unheard-of 
advantages, on the premises of Mr. Gobblemadam, at ]STo. 541, 
New Ruin Street. Without disguising anything more than 
the addresses of these puffing worthies, we shall quote ver- 
batim a few paragraphs from their productions. The catalogue 
of bargains in the one before us comprises almost every species 
of textile manufacture, as well native as foreign — among 
which silks, shawls, dresses, furs, and mantles are the most 
prominent; and amazing bargains they are — witness the 
following extracts : 



" A marvellous variety of fancy silks, cost from 4 to 5 guineas 

each, will be sold for £i 19s. 6d. each. 
Robes of damas and broche (foreign), cost 6 guineas, to be sold 

for 2\ guineas. 
Embroidered muslin robes, newest fashion, cost 18s 9d. 5 to be 

sold for 9s. 6d. 
Worked lace dresses, cost 35s., to be sold at 14s. 9d. 

Do. do. cost 28s. 6d., to be sold at 7s. 6d. 



282 crmosiTiES of loxdox life. 

Newest dresses, of fashionable materials, worth 35s., to be sold 

for 9s. 9d. 
Splendid Paisley shawls, worth %\ guineas, for 16s. 
Cashmere shawls (perfect gems), cost 4 guineas, to be sold for 

35s." 

A long list of similar bargains closes with a declaration that, 
although these prices are mentioned, a clearance of the pre- 
mises, rather than a compensation for the value of the goods, 
is the great object in view; that the articles will be got rid of 
regardless of price; and that "the disjyosal will assume the cha- 
racter of a gratuitous distribution, rather than of an actual 
sale" This is pretty well for the first hap-hazard plunge 
into the half-bushel piled upon our table. Mr. Gobblemadam 
may go down. Let us see what the next will produce. 

The second is addressed thus : " To he opened within two 
hours after delivery. — specie commission. — Final Audit, 
30th October, 1851." The contents are a closely-printed 
extra-royal folio broadside, issued by the firm of Messrs. 
Shavelass and Swallowher, of Tottering Terrace West. It 
contains a voluminous list of useful domestic goods, presenting 
the most enormous bargains, in the way of sheetings, shirtings, 
flannels, diapers, damasks, dimities, table-cloths, &c. &c. The 
economical housewife is cautioned by this generous firm, that 
to disregard the present opportunity would be the utmost 
excess of folly, as the whole stock is to be peremptorily sold 
considerably under half the cost price. The following are a 
few of the items : 

"Irish linens, warranted genuine, 9Jd. per yard. 
Fine cambric handkerchiefs, 2s. 6d. per dozen. 
Curtain damask, in all colours, 6^-d. per yard. 
Swiss curtains, elegantly embroidered, four yards long, for 

6s. 9d. a pair — cost 17s. 6d. 
Drawing-room curtains, elaborately wrought, at 8s. 6d. a pair — 

cost 21s." 



PTJFF AXD PUSH. 283 

The bargains, in short, as Messrs. Shavelass and Swallow- 
her observe, are of such an astounding description, as "to 
strike all who witness them with wonder, amazement, and 
surprise;" and "demand inspection from every lady who 
desires to unite superiority of taste with genuine quality and 
economy." 

The next is a remarkably neat envelope, with a handsomely 
embossed border, bearing the words, "on especial seevice" 
under the address, and winged with a two-penny stamp. The 
enclosure is a specimen of fine printing on smooth, thin vel- 
lum, in the form of a quarto catalogue, with a deep, black- 
bordered title-page, emanating from the dreary establishment 
of Messrs. Moan and Groan, of Cypress Row. Here commerce 
condescends to sympathy, and measures forth to bereaved and 
afflicted humanity the outward and visible symbols of their 
hidden griefs. Here, when you enter his gloomy penetralia, 
and invoke his services, the sable- clad and cadaverous- 
featured shopman asks you, in a sepulchral voice — we are 
not writing romance, but simple fact — whether you are to be 
suited for inextinguishable sorrow, or for mere passing grief; 
and if you are at all in doubt upon the subject, he can solve 
the problem for you, if you lend him your confidence for the 
occasion. He knows from long and melancholy experience 
the agonising intensity of woe expressed by bombazine, crape, 
and Paramatta; can tell to a sigh the precise amount of 
regret that resides in a black bonnet; and can match any 
degree of internal anguish with its corresponding shade of 
colour, from the utter desolation and inconsolable wretched- 
ness of dead and dismal black, to the transient sentiment of 
sorrowful remembrance so appropriately symbolised by the 
faintest shade of lavender or French gray. Messrs. Moan and 
Groan know well enough, that when the heart is burdened 
with sorrow, considerations of economy are likely to be ban- 
ished from the mind as out of place, and disrespectful to the 
memory of the departed; and, therefore, they do not affront 



284 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

their sorrowing patrons with the sublunary details of pounds, 
shillings, and pence. They speed on the wings of the post to 
the house of mourning, with the benevolent purpose of com- 
forting the afflicted household. They are the first, after the 
stroke of calamity has fallen, to mingle the business of life 
with its regrets ; and to cover the woes of the past with the 
allowable vanities of the present. Step by step, they lead 
their melancholy patrons along the meandering margin of 
their flowing pages — from trie very borders of the tomb, 
through all the intermediate changes by which sorrow pub- 
lishes to the world its gradual subsidence, and land them at 
last, in the sixteenth page, restored to themselves and to 
society, in the front-box of the Opera, glittering in " splendid 
head-dresses in pearl/' in " fashionably elegant turbans," and 
in " dress-caps trimmed with blonde and Brussels lace." For 
such benefactors to womankind — the dears — of course no 
reward can be too great ; and, therefore, Messrs. Moan and 
Groan, strong in their modest sense of merit, make no parade 
of prices. They offer you all that in circumstances of 
mourning you can possibly want ; they scorn to do you the 
disgrace of imagining that you would drive a bargain on the 
very brink of the grave ; and you are of course obliged to 
them for the delicacy of their reserve on so commonplace a 
subject, and you pay their bill in decorous disregard of the 
amount. It is true, that certain envious rivals have compared 
them to birds of prey, scenting mortality from afar, and 
hovering like vultures on the trail of death, in order to profit 
by bis dart; but such " caparisons," as Mrs. Malaprop says, 
"are odorous," and we will have nothing to do with 
them. 

The next, and the last we shall examine, ere Eetty claims 
the whole mass to kindle her fires, is a somewhat bulky en- 
velope, addressed in a neat hand : To the Lady of the House. 
It contains a couple of very voluminous papers, almost as large 
as the broad page of The Times, one of which adverts myste- 



PUFF AND PUSH. 285 

riously to some appalling calamity which, has resulted in a 
"most disastrous failtjee, productive of the most intense 
excitement in the commercial world." We learn further on, 
that from various conflicting circumstances, which the writer 
does not condescend to explain, above £150,000 worth of 
property has come into the hands of Messrs. Grabble and Grab, 
of Smash Place, " which they are resolute in summarily dis- 
posing of on principles commensurate with the honourable position 
they hold in the metropolis." Then follows a list of tempting 
bargains, completely filling both the broad sheets. Here are 
a few samples : 

" Costly magnificent long shawls, manufactured at .£6, to be 

sold for 18s. 6d. 
Fur victorines, usually charged 18s. 6d., to sell at Is. 3d. 
2,500 shawls (Barege), worth 21s. each, to sell at 5s. 
Embroidered satin shawls (magnificent), value 20 guineas 

each, to be sold for 3 guineas." 

The reader is probably satisfied by this time of the extraor- 
dinary cheapness of these inexhaustible wares, which thus go 
begging for purchasers in the bosoms of families. It is hardly 
necessary to inform him, that all these enormous pretensions 
are so many lying delusions, intended only to bring people in 
crowds to the shop, where they are effectually fleeced by the 
jackals in attendance. If the lady reader doubt the truth of 
our assertion, let her go for once to the establishment of 
Messrs. Grabble and Grab last named. An omnibus from any 
part of the city or suburbs will, as the circular informs you, 
set you down at the door. Upon entering the shop, you are 
received by a polite inquiry from the " walker" as to the pur- 
pose of your visit. You must say something in answer to his 
torrent of civility, and you probably name the thing you want, 
or at least which you are willing to have at the price named 
in the sheet transmitted to you through the post. Suppose 
you utter the word " shawl." " This way, madam," says he ; 
and forthwith leads you a long dance to the end of the coun- 



286 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

ter, where he consigns you over to the management of a plau- 
sible genius invested with the control of the shawl department. 
You have perhaps the list of prices in your hand, and you 
point out the article you wish to see. The fellow shows you 
fifty things for which you have no occasion, in spite of your 
reiterated request for the article in the list. He states his 
conviction in a flattering tone that that article would not 
become you, and recommends those he offers as incomparably 
superior. If you insist, which you rarely can, he is at length 
sorry to inform you that the article is unfortunately just now 
out of stock, depreciating it at the same time as altogether 
beneath your notice; and in the end succeeds in cramming 
you with something which you don't want, and for which you 
pay from 15 to 20 per cent, more than your own draper would 
have charged you for it. 

The above extracts are given in illustration of the last new 
discovery in the science of puffing — a discovery by which, 
through the agency of the press, the penny-post, and the last 
new London Directory, the greatest rogues are enabled to prac- 
tise upon the simplicity of our better-halves, while we think 
them secure in the guardianship of home. "We imagine that, 
practically, this science must be now pretty near completion. 
Earth, air, fire, and water, are all pressed into the service. 
It has its painters, and poets, and literary staff, from the bard 
who tunes his harp to the praise of the pantaloons of the great 
public benefactor Xoses, to the immortal professoress of crochet 
and cross-stitch, who contracts for £120 a year to puff in 
" The Family Fudge" the super- excellent knitting and boar's- 
head cotton of Messrs. Steel and Goldseye. It may be that 
something more is yet within the reach of human ingenuity. 
It remains to be seen whether we shall at some future time 
find puffs in the hearts of lettuces and summer-cabbages, or 
shell them from our green-peas and Windsor beans. It might 
be brought about, perhaps, were the market-gardeners enlisted 
in the cause ; the only question is, whether it could be made 
to pay. 



287 



BUBBLE COMPANIES. 



What is to be done with the money which is realized in the 
ordinary conrse of affairs, has latterly become a kind of puzzle. 
There it goes on accumulating as a result of industry ; but 
what then ? A person can but eat one dinner in the day ; two 
or three coats are about all he needs for the outer man ; he can 
but live in one house at a time ; and, in short, after paying 
away all he needs to pay, he finds that he has got a little over 
for — investment. Since our young days, this word invest- 
ment has come remarkably into use. All are looking for in- 
vestments ; and as supply ordinarily follows demand, up there 
rise, at periodical intervals, an amazing number of plans for 
the said investments — in plain English, relieving people of 
their money. A few years ago, railways were the favourite 
absorbents. Railways, on a somewhat more honest principle, 
may possibly again have their day. Meanwhile, the man of 
money has opened up to him a very comprehensive field for 
the investment of his cash : he can send it upon any mission 
he chooses ; he may dig turf with it, or he may dig gold ; he 
may catch whales, or he may catch sprats, or do fifty other 
things ; but if he see it again after having relinquished his 
hold upon it, he must have exercised more discretion than falls 
to the lot of the majority of Her Majesty's lieges in their 
helter-skelter steeple -chasing after twenty per cent. Our pre- 
sent business, however, is not with legitimate speculation, but 



288 CUEIOSITIES OF LOKDOtf LIFE. 

with schemes in which no discretion is exercised, or by 
which discretion is set to sleep — in a word, with bubble 
investments; and the history of many of the most pro- 
mising of these speculations may be read in the following 
brief and not altogether mythical biography, of an interesting 
specimen which suddenly fell into a declining way, and is 
supposed to have lately departed this life. 

The long Eange Excavator Rock-Crushing and Gold- 
Winning Company was born from the brain of Aurophilus 
Dobrown, Esq., of Smallchange Dell, in the county of Mid- 
dlesex, between the hours of ten and eleven at night on the 
14th of October, 1851. It was at first a shapeless and un- 
promising bantling ; but being introduced to the patronage of 
a conclave of experienced drynurses, it speedily became de- 
veloped in form and proportion ; and before it was ten days 
old, was formally introduced, with official garniture, to the 
expectant public, by whom it was received with general ap- 
probation and favour. The new company, in a dashing pro- 
spectus, held forth a certain prospect of enormous advantages 
to shareholders, with an entire exemption from responsibility 
of every sort. The shares were a million in number, at one 
pound each, without any farther call — on the loose-cash 
principle, and no signing of documents. Aurophilus Dobrown 
was chairman of the committee of management. 

The intentions of the company, as detailed at length in their 
eloquent prospectus, were to invade the gold regions of the 
Australian continent with a monster engine, contrived by the 
indefatigable Crushcliff, and which, it was confidently ex- 
pected, would devour the soil of the auriferous district at a 
rate averaging about three tons per minute. It was furnished, 
so the engineer averred, with a stomach of 250 tons capacity, 
supplied with peristaltic grinders of steel of the most obdurate 
temper, enabling it with ease to digest the hardest granite 
rocks, to crush the masses of quartz into powder, and to deposit 
the virgin gold upon a sliding floor underneath. The machine 



BUBBLE COMPANIES. 289 

was to be set in motion by the irresistible force of "the 
pressure from without," and 1000 pounds- weight of pure gold 
per diem was considered a very low estimate of its powers of 
production. These reasonable expectations being modestly 
set forth in circulars and public advertisements, and backed by 
the august patronage of the respectable and responsible indi- 
viduals above named, the Long Range Excavator Company 
speedily grew into vast repute. The starving herd encamped 
in Stagg's Alley, new at once to pen, ink, and paper, and ap- 
plications for shares poured in by thousands. Referees were 
hunted up, or they were not — that is no great matter. Half 
a million of the shares were duly allotted ; and that done, to 
the supreme delectation of the stags, Mr. Stickemup the broker, 
in conjunction with his old friend and colleague Mr. Knockemoff, 
fixed the price of shares by an inaugural transaction of con- 
siderable amount, at twenty- five per cent, above par, at which 
they went off briskly. Now were the stags to be seen flying 
in every direction, eager to turn a penny before the inevitable 
hour appointed for payment of the shares. It was curious to 
observe the gradual wane of covetousness in the cerval mind ; 
how, as the fateful hour approached, their demand for profit 
grew small by degrees and beautifully less. From 4s. pre- 
mium per share to 3s. ; from 3s. to 2s. ; from 2s. to Is. ; and 
thence to such a thing as 9d., 8d., 7d,, and still downwards, 
till, as the hand of the dial verged upon the closing stroke of 
the bell, they condescended to resign their Long Range Ex- 
cavators to the charge of buyers who could pay for the shares 
they held. The company was now fairly afloat. By the 
aid of 

" A few clever riggers to put on the pot, 
To stir it round gently, and serve while 'twas hot." 

the shares rose higher than had been expected. Aurophilus 
Dobrown sold his 50,000 at a handsome premium, and realised 
what he was pleased privately to term " something sub- 
stantial" by the speculation. The public became enthusiastic 

o 



290 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

on the subject of the Long Range Excavators, and for a few 
short weeks they were the favourite speculation of the mar- 
ket. By and by, however, a rumour began to be whispered 
about on the subject of the monster-machine, the stomach of 
which, it was secretly hinted, was alarmingly out of order, 
and resisted all the tonics of the engineer. It was currently 
reported among parties most interested, that from late experi- 
ments made, previous to embarkation, it had been ascertained 
beyond a doubt, that though the peristaltic apparatus digested 
pints with perfect ease, it yet rejected quartz — a defect 
which it was but too plain would be fatal to the production of 
gold. The effect of this rumour was most alarmingly de- 
pressing upon the value of the shares. In a few days they 
fell fifty per cent, below par, with few buyers even at 
that. At this juncture it was discovered, that one of the 
directors was actively bearing the market ; but the discovery 
was not made before that disinterested personage, who had 
previously disposed of the whole of his original allotment at a 
handsome premium, had secured above 10,000 new shares at 
a cost of about half their upset value. A colleague openly 
accused him of this disgraceful traffic at a general meeting of 
the directors, and declared that he had not words to express 
his disgust at one who, for the sake of his own personal profit, 
could condescend to depreciate the property of his constituents. 
The accused retorted, and the meeting growing stormy and 
abusive, ended late at night with closed doors. 

A few days after, affairs again began to take a turn upwards. 
The failure of the engine was declared to be an erroneous and 
altogether unfounded report. It was boldly asserted, that 
the small model- engine of one inch to the foot, had actually 
crushed several masses of Scotch granite, and eliminated 
seven or eight ounces of pure metal ; and these specimens were 
exhibited under a glass-case in the office of the company, in 
proof of their triumphant success. Now the shares rose again 
as rapidly as they had lately fallen, and honourable gentlemen 



BTJBBLE COMPANIES. 291 

who had held on, had an opportunity of turning themselves 
round. It is to be supposed that some of them at least did 
that to their satisfaction ; at any rate, the respectable and 
responsible concoctors of the Long Range Excavator Rock- 
Crushing and Gold- Winning Company very soon began to 
turn their backs upon the public altogether. By degrees, the 
whole body of directors, trustees, counsel, and agents, dwindled 
down to a solitary clerk paring his nails in a deserted office. 
Shares at a discount of 60, 70, 80, 90 per cent, attested 
the decline of the speculation. Honourable gentlemen were 
reported to have gone upon their travels. The office was at 
first " temporarily closed," and then let to the new company 
for Bridging the Dardanelles on the Tubular Principle. The 
engine of the Long Range Excavators, according to the last 
report, had foundered — but whether in the brain of Crushcliff, 
the engineer, or on the Scilly Rocks, we could not clearly 
make out. The only one of the original promoters who has 
latterly condescended to gratify the gaze of the public, is the 
Baron Badlihoff, who, a few days ago made his appearance on 
the monkey-board of an omnibus, whence he was suddenly 
escorted by policeman B. 1001, to the presence of a magistrate, 
who unsympathisingly transferred him to Clerkenwell Jail, 
for certain paltry threepenny defalcations, due to a lapse of 
memory which our shameful code persists in regarding as 
worthy of incarceration and hard labour. He is now an active 
member of a company legally incorporated under government 
sanction, for grinding the wind upon the revolving principle. 
It is not precisely known when the first dividend on the 
Long Range Excavators will be declared. Sanguine specu- 
lators in the L. R. E. and the Thames Conflagration Company, 
expect to draw both dividends on the same day. In the 
meantime, the books are safe in the custody of Messrs. Holdem 
Tight and Brass, of Thieves , Inn ; and ill-natured people are 
not wanting, who insinuate that they constitute the only pro- 
perty available for the benefit of the shareholders. 

02 



292 cmtiosiTiEs or loxdox life. 

Let us now take a glance at a snug little commercial bubble, 
blown into being by "highly respectable men/' a private 
affair altogether, which never had a name upon 'Change, and 
was managed — we cannot say to the satisfaction of all parties 

— by the originating contrivers, without making any noise 
in the papers, or exciting public attention in any way. We 
will call it, for the sake of a name, " The Babel and Lowriver 
Steam Navigation Company." Lowriver is a pleasant, genteel 
little village, which has of late years sprung suddenly into 

existence on the coast of shire, and has been growing, for 

the last seven years, with each succeeding summer, more arid 
more a place of favourite resort with the inhabitants of Babel. 
Air. Hontague Whalebone took an early liking to the place, 
and built a row of goodly houses by the water- side, and a 
grand hotel at the end of the few stumps of pitchy stakes dig- 
nified by the name of the pier. But the hotel lacked cus- 
tomers, and the houses wanted tenants ; and the whole affair 
threatened to fall a prey to river-fog and mildew, when the 
Babel and Lowriver Steam Navigation Company came to the 
rescue, and placed it upon a permanent and expansive footing. 
Of the original constitution of this snug company, it is not 
easy to say anything with certainty. All we know is, that, 
some seven years ago, it was currently spoken of in private 
circles as a capital investment for money, supposing only that 
shares could be got : that was the difficult thing. Large divi- 
dends were to be realized by building four steamers, and run- 
ning them between Babel and Lowriver. Upon the neat hot- 
pressed prospectus, privately and sparingly circulated — it 
was whispered that it was too good a thing to go a begging 

— appeared the names of Erebus Carbon, Esq., of Diamond 
Wharf; of Montague Whalebone, Esq., of Lowriver; of 
Larboard Starboard, Esq., ship -builder ; and Piston Bodd, 
Esq., of the firm of Boiler & Bodd, engineers, as directors. 
The shares were £20 each, liable to calls, though no calls 
were anticipated; and it was reckoned an enormous favour 



BUBBLE COMPANIES. 293 

to get them. Traffic in shares was discountenanced ; the 
company had no wish to he regarded as a cluster of specu- 
lators, hut rather as a band of brothers, co-operating together 
for their common benefit. Of course, the necessary legal 
formalities were gone through — that could not safely be dis- 
pensed with. 

In spite of the difficulty of obtaining shares, a pretty large 
number of them got into the hands of the respectable portion 
of the public, and the whole were soon taken up. The boats 
were built by Larboard Starboard, Esq. ; and the engines, as 
a matter of course, were put on board by Messrs Boiler & Eodd ; 
Erebus Carbon, Esq., supplied, at the current rates, the neces- 
sary fuel ; and at all hours of the day the vessels ran back- 
wards and forwards, carrying customers to Mr. Montague 
"Whalebone's hotel, and lodgers to the new tenements, which 
soon began to rise around it in all directions. Lowriver took 
amazingly, and rose rapidly in public estimation ; the boats 
filled well, and the speculation promised great things. When, 
however, after several months of undeviating prosperity, the 
shareholders began to look for some return for their capital in 
the shape of a dividend, each one of them was individually 
surprised by a "call;" £5 a share was wanted to clear off 
urgent responsibilities. " The outfitting costs had been 
greater than was foreseen,' ' and the demands upon the share- 
holders were not likely to be limited to the first call. The 
victims rushed, as they were invited to do, to the office, to 
inspect the accounts. The engineer was there to receive 
them, and, all suavity and politeness, submitted every fact 
and figure to their investigation. There was nothing to be 
found fault with — everything was fairly booked ; but there 
was a heavy balance dead against the company. The engineer 
himself put a long face upon the affair, and shrugged his 
shoulders, and mumbled something about having burned 
his own fingers, &c. After this, reports soon got abroad 
very prejudicial to the value of the investments. Then 



294 CTBIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

came the winter, during which, few passengers travelled to 
Lowriver ; and with Chiistmas came another £5 call. People 
grew tired of paying twenty per cent, for nothing, and many 
forfeited their shares by suffering them to be sold to pay the 
calls. This game went on for nearly three years — all " calls" 
and no dividends ; until at length it would have been diffi- 
cult to find Hire persons out of the original five hundred 
who held shares in the Babel and Lowriver Steam Navigation 
Company, and there was next to nobody left to call upon. 

Years have rolled on since then. Lowriver has grown into 
a popular and populous marine summer residence. 3Ir. 
^Montague "Whalebone, who knew what he was about, having 
bought and leased the building- ground, has become the owner 
of a vast property, increasing in value every day. Larboard 
Starboard, Esq., is on the way to become a millionaire, and 
has several new boats building for the company's service at 
the present moment. Messrs. "Boiler & Eodd have quintupled 
their establishment, and are in a condition to execute govern- 
ment contracts. Erebus Carbon, Esq., has found a market in 
the company for hundreds of thousands of tons of coal, and, 
from keeping a solitary wharf, has come to be the owner of 
a fleet of colliers. At this hour the company consists of six 
individuals — the four original projectors, and a couple of old 
codgers — "knowing files," who had the penetration, in the 
beginning, to see through the "bearing dodge," and would 
not be beaten or frightened off. They paid up every call upon 
shares, and bought others — and then, by showing a bold 
front, asserted a voice in the management, and crushed in to 
a full and fair share of the profits. They have made solid 
fortunes by the speculation ; while the original shareholders, 
whose money brought the company into existence, have reaped 
nothing but losses and vexation in return for their capital. 

Eut enough, and more than enough, on the score of the 
delusive farces which, with pretences almost as transparent as 
the above, are from time to time played off for the purpose of 



BUBBLE COMPANIES. 295 

easing the public of their superfluous cash. Let us glance 
briefly at a speculation of a different kind, no less a bubble as 
it proved, but one whose tragic issues have already wrought 
the wreck of many innocent families, and which, at the 
present moment, under the operation of the Winding-up Act, 
is darkening with ruin and the fear of ruin a hundred humble 
abodes. We have good reason to know its history too well ; 
and we shall, in as few words as possible, present the facts 
most important to be known to the reader's consideration, 
with the view of inculcating caution by the misfortunes of 
others, and showing at the same time how possible it is, under 
the present law regulating joint-stock partnerships, for an 
honest man, by the most inadvertent act, to entail misery upon 
himself, and destitution upon his offspring. 

It is some fifteen or twenty years ago, since a company of 
two or three speculative geniuses issued a plan for establish- 
ing, in a delightful glen situated but a few miles from a well- 
known Welsh port in the "Bristol Channel, a brewery upon an 
extensive scale. The prospectus, as a matter of course, pro- 
mised to the shareholders the usual golden advantages. The 
crystal current which meandered through the valley was to be 
converted into malt-liquor — so great were the natural and 
artificial advantages which combined to effect that result — at 
one -half the cost of such a transformation in any other locality; 
and the liquor produced was to be of such exquisite relish and 
potency, that all Britain was to compete for its possession. So 
plausible was everything made to appear, that men of com- 
mercially acquired fortune, of the greatest experience, and of 
long-tried judgment, invested their capital in the fullest con- 
fidence of success. Following their example, tradesmen and 
employers did the same ; and, in imitation of their betters, 
numbers of persons of the classes of small shopkeepers and 
labouring-men invested their small savings in shares in the 
" Eomantic Yalley Brewery." The number of joint-pro- 
prietors amounted in all to some hundreds, holding £20 shares 



296 curiosities or london life. 

in numbers proportioned to their means or their speculative 
spirit. Not one in fifty of them knew anything of the art of 
brewing, or had any knowledge of the locality where the 
scheme was to be carried out ; but no doubt was entertained 
of the speedy and great success which was promised. 

The land was bought, the necessary buildings were substan- 
tially erected, and the three principal concocters of the scheme, 
one of whom was a lawyer, were appointed to manage the 
concern, and empowered to borrow money in case it should 
be wanted, to complete the plant, and to work it until the 
profits came in. They had every advantage for the produc- 
tion of a cheap and superior article : labour, land-carriage, 
and water-carriage, were all at a low charge in the neigh- 
bourhood, and materials, upon the whole, rated rather under 
than over the average. Year after year, however, passed 
away, and not a farthing of dividend came to the share- 
holders ; promises only of large profits at some future period — 
that was all. It happened that none of the shareholders had 
invested any very large sums, and this was thought a fortu- 
nate circumstance, as none of them felt very deeply involved. 
The rich had speculated with their superfluity, and they could 
bear to joke on the subject of the Romantic Yalley, though 
they shook their heads when the supposed value of the shares 
was hinted at. The poor felt it more, and some of the 
neediest sold their single shares or half- shares at a terrible 
discount, while they would yet realise something. As time 
rolled on, several of the older proprietors died off, and willed 
away, with the rest of their property, the Romantic Yalley 
Brewery shares to their friends and relatives. A considerable 
number of them thus passed from the first holders to the hands 
of others, one and all of whom naturally accepted the legacies 
devised to them, and gave the necessary signatures to the 
documents which made the shares their own. 

Meanwhile, the managers went on working an unprofitable 
business, borrowing money on the credit of the joint pro- 



BUBBLE COMPANIES. 297 

prietors ; and in the face of all the advantages upon which 
they plumed themselves, plunged deeper and deeper into debt, 
until, being forced to borrow at a high rate of interest to pay 
for the use of former loans, they found their credit, in the 
thirteenth year of their existence, completely exhausted ; and 
then the bubble burst at once in ruin, utter and complete, 
overwhelming all who were legally connected with it, either 
by original purchase, by transfer, or by inheritance. Inde- 
pendent country gentlemen, west- country manufacturers, and 
merchants of substantial capital, were summarily pounced 
upon by the fangs of the law, and all simultaneously stripped 
of everything they possessed in the world. Professional men, 
the fathers of families genteely bred and educated, were sum- 
marily bereft of every farthing, and condemned in the decline 
of life to begin the world afresh. Not a few, seized with 
mortal chagrin at the horrible consummation of an affair which 
had never been anything but a source of loss and annoyance, 
sunk at once into the grave. Others — accustomed perhaps 
for half a century to the appliances of ease and luxury, and 
who were the owners of hospitable mansions, the centres of 
genteel resort — at the present moment hide their heads in 
cottages, and huts, and eleemosynary chambers, where they 
wither in silence and neglect under the cold breath of alien 
charity. Some, at threescore, are driven forth from a life of 
indulgence and inactivity, to earn their daily bread. Young 
and rising tradesmen, who had had the misfortune to inherit 
from a relative or a patron but a few shares, or even a single 
one, saw themselves at once precipitated into bankruptcy. 
One case, for which we can personally vouch, is beyond 
measure distressing : a gentleman of good fortune dying, had 
bequeathed to each of a large family of daughters a handsome 
provision ; shortly before the bursting of the fearful bubble, 
the mother also died, dividing by will her own fortune among 
the young ladies, and leaving to each one a few shares in the 
Romantic Valley Brewery. The transference of these shares 

o 3 



298 CURIOSITIES OP LOKDON LIFE. 

to the several children made the whole of them liable to the 
extent of their entire property ; and the whole six unfortunates 
were actually beggared to the last farthing, and cast upon the 
world to shift as they might. To detail the domestic deso- 
lation caused by this iniquitous affair, would require the space 
of a large volume. It has wrought nothing but wretchedness 
and ruin to those to whom it promised unexampled prosperity, 
and it is yet working still more — nor is it likely to stop, for 
aught that we can see, so long as it presents a mark for legal 
cupidity. All that could, be got for the creditors has been 
extorted long ago from the wealthier portion of the victims ; 
but the loans are not yet all liquidated, and the claim yet 
remaining unsatisfied, is now the pretext under which the 
lawyers are sucking the life-blood from the hard-working and 
struggling class of shareholders, who, while industriously 
striving for a respectable position, are considered worth 
crushing for the sake of the costs, though they will never yield 
a penny towards the debt. 

Besides the persons who have the settlement of affairs in 
their hands, the original concocters of the company are the 
only persons who have profited from its operations. They 
indeed ride gloriously aloft above the ruin they have wrought. 
The process by which they have managed to extract a lordly 
independence for themselves, from a scheme which has resulted 
in the destitution and misery of every other participator, is a 
mystery we do not pretend to fathom in this case — though it 
is one of by no means unusual occurrence in connection with 
bubble- companies of all sorts. 



299 



"WILD SPOUTS OP THE EAST. 



The love of sport, as it is complaisantly termed, displayed by all 
ranks and classes among all the nations and tribes of the genus 
homo, is hardly less manifest among the dwellers in close and 
crowded cities, than among the nomadic lords of the forest and 
the plain. "Whether it be that there is something in the sud- 
den death-dealing vindication of man's authority over the 
beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the dumb denizens 
of the deep, that is gratifying to his vanity and egoism, or 
whether there be a pleasure independent of that in circum- 
venting the wise instincts which nature has so variously im- 
planted in the whole animal mind to ensure the due preserva- 
tion of their several races, we are not going at this moment to 
inquire. It is enough for our present purpose that, irrespec- 
tive of the demands of necessity, which we leave out of the 
question, wherever the human biped can find the two elements 
that go to constitute the savage recreation of sporting — to 
wit, the animal to be hunted or slain, and the means of hunt- 
ing or slaying it — there he is sure to be found asserting his 
cruel prerogative, and rejoicing in the sport. 

Nay more — if the game be not forthcoming, so strong is 
the instinct to hunt and slay, that he will purchase vermin 
for the sake of worrying it — or start from his winter fireside 
or his warm bed to go in search of the meanest quarry that 
runs or burrows, swims or flies. 



300 CTJKIOSITIES OE LONDON LITE. 

The sportsmen of the metropolis may be divided into two 
very separate and distinct classes : the professionals and the 
amateurs — the former being the aristocracy, the latter the jpro- 
fanum vulgus of the species. With the first, comprising in its 
catalogues of great names, all, or nearly all, the " crack shots ,: 
of the day — slayers of thousands of pigeons and pluckers of 
thousands more — as we do not pretend to be initiated into the 
manifold mysteries of their hidden craft — have never been 
admitted to the secret conclave at the " Red House' ' — shot 
sparrows from the trap in Bill Grimes's meadow — or won a pig 
or lost a pound at a pigeon match in the whole course of our 
lives, we cannot pretend any intimate acquaintance, — and 
must, therefore, leave them alone in their glory — a glory by 
the way which few of them would be willing to exchange for 
a reputation, however well deserved, established upon any other 
basis. We must confine our attention in this brief paper to 
that large section of the middle and lower orders with whom 
the pursuit of sport would seem to be a sort of governing in- 
stinct, impelling them to assume the angle in summer and the 
gun in winter, and to plod thousands of miles through the 
dust and swelter of one season, and the rain, snow, and drizzle 
of the other, in the pursuit of what they rarely by any chance 
come up with — game. 

The angling season begins in London with the very first 
disappearance of frost and the first blush of blue sky in 
the heavens ; and, with comparatively few exceptions, Sun- 
days and holidays are the only days of sport. The young 
angler begins his career in the Surrey Canal, the Grand Junc- 
tion Canal, or the New River, which ever happens to be 
nearest to the place of his abode. His first apparatus is a 
willow- wand, bought at the basketmaker's for a penny, and 
a roach-line for fi vepence more. A sixpenny outfit satisfies 
his modest ambition ; and thus equipped he sallies forth to 
feed — not the fishes — them he invariably frightens away — 
but himself, with the delusive hope of catching them. The 



WILD SPOUTS OE THE EAST. 301 

blue-bottles have not yet left their winter quarters, and 
"gentles" or maggots are not yet to be had ; so he has re- 
course to kneaded bread or paste, hoping to beguile his prey 
with a vegetable diet. In order that the fishes may be duly 
apprised of the entertainment prepared for them, he crams his 
trousers -pockets with gravel, which he industriously scatters 
upon his float as it sails down the stream, doubtless impressed 
with the notion that the whole finny tribe within hearing will 
swarm beneath the stony shower to take their choice of the 
descending blessings, and finding his bait among them, give it 
the preference, and swallow it as a matter of course. The 
theory seems a very plausible one ; but we cannot say that in 
practice, though witnessing it a thousand times, we ever saw 
it succeed. For the sake of something like an estimate of the 
amount of success among the juvenile anglers of this class, we 
lately watched the operations of a group of nearly thirty of 
them for two hours, but failed in deriving any data for a cal- 
culation, as not a fin appeared above water the whole time. 
With the exception of a few "sturmin' bites," and one "rippin' 
wallopper," which was proclaimed to have carried off a boy's 
hook, there was no indication of sport beyond that afforded by 
the party themselves. 

"When the sun, bountiful to sportsmen, begins, as Shakspeare 
has it, "to breed maggots in a dead dog," a new and superior 
race of anglers appears upon the margin of the waters. The 
dead dogs then have their day, and are now carefully collected 
from holes and corners by the makers and venders of fishing- 
tackle, and comfortably swaddled in bran, where they lie till 
their bones are white, originating " gentles " through the live- 
long summer for the use of the devotees of angling. 'Now we 
see something like tackle deserving the name : capitalists who 
think nothing of a crown, aye, or a pound either, by way of 
outfit ; rods of real bamboo, straight as an arrow, and fifteen 
or twenty feet long; floats of porcupine quill, and lines of 
China twist; bait boxes, fish-cans, and belted baskets, and 



302 ctraiosiTiEs of London life. 

all the paraphernalia of the contemplative recreation appear 
upon the banks ; but still no fish, or nothing larger than what 
a half-pound trout would gobble up in his prowlings through 
some country stream for breakfast. All these mighty preparations 
are made against a generation among which a full- sized sprat 
would rank as a triton among the minnows. Not one Cockney 
sportsman in ten thousand has ever seen a trout alive, and 
would perhaps be as likely to be pulled into the water by one 
of a couple of pounds' weight as to pull the fish out, were he 
by any miracle doomed to the terrible alternative. 

The oriental's enthusiasm for the sport has no sort of relation 
to his success. We met Charley Braggs in our last Sunday- 
evening's walk returning from his day's amusement. Now 

Charley is a machine-man in the Printing- office, and 

having put the Sunday paper to bed at about two o'clock, in- 
stead of going home to his own after a week of unremitting 
toil, he had set off for Hornsey by moonlight, where, perching 
himself upon a bank, he had sat from three in the morning till 
seven at night, bobbing for small fry at a bend in the New 
River. His basket was well stuffed — with grass ; among 
which he pointed exultingly to four or five little silvery vic- 
tims, whose united weight would have kicked the beam against 
a quarter of a pound. And yet Charley thought himself suc- 
cessful ; and so he was in comparison with the average of New 
River anglers. 

But we must ascend in the scale in order to do fair justice 
to our subject, and take a glance at the angling establishments 
in the neighbourhood of London, where good-sized fish are 
really caught, or, as the phrase is, " killed;" and where, in 
order that there may be no doubt about it, their skins are 
plentifully varnished and preserved as evidence of the fact. 
Upon the banks of the several rivers that empty themselves into 
the Thames at various points in the vicinity of London there 
are numerous establishments of this kind. We shall sketch 
one where we have before now passed a delicious day in the 



WILD SPOETS OF THE EAST. 303 

enjoyment of the dolce far niente> and which will serve very 
well as a sample of the whole. 

We mount upon an omnibus, and driving four or five miles 
through the suburbs in a north-easterly direction, are set down 
at a turnpike-gate in a neat, tree- sprinkled village. Leaving 
the village to the west, we take the turnpike-road, which leads 
in a direct line to the river, where, at the distance of half a 
mile from the village, it is crossed by a substantial and hand- 
some bridge. Traversing the bridge, we turn to the right 
after a passage of a few score paces, and enter, through neatly- 
trimmed walks, upon the grounds and gardens of a country 
inn. Covered seats and rustic alcoves — arbours, and quiet, 
snug, leafy retreats, abound in the gardens and grounds which 
abut upon the river's brink. The water foams and dashes 
with the unceasing noise of a cataract over a series of wooden 
dams, erected to divert the main current into a new channel 
for the purposes of navigation — the old bed of the river being 
that rented by the proprietor of the inn, and by him strictly 
preserved for the delectation of his patrons, the amateur anglers 
of the metropolis. Let us enter the house, and proceeding 
upstairs to the piscatory sanctum, look around us while we 
impinge upon a bottle of the landlord's unexceptionable ale. 
Here we are in the very paradise of the London anglers, and 
surrounded with the trophies of their cunning and patience, 
ranged in glass-cases, and labelled with the weight of the im- 
mortalised victims and the names of their fortunate captors. 
Here it is recorded, for the instruction of future generations, 
that a gudgeon of seven inches three-eighths in length, and 
five ounces and a half in weight, was captured by the re- 
doubtable Dubbs of Tooley Street, on the 6th of August, 1839; 
and though Dubbs himself, for aught we know, may long since 
have been gathered to his fathers, the wide-mouthed witness 
of the fact, the gudgeon himself, still hangs in the centre of his 
glass-case, suspended like Mohammed's coffin between heaven 
and earth, to bear perpetual testimony to his prowess. Yonder 



304 CTJEIOSITIES OP LONDON LIFE. 

is a perch of three pounds, caught by Stubbs of Little Britain; 
and above it a mavellously chubby chub, caught by Bubb of 
the street called Grub. These memorials of past achievements 
no doubt have their due influence, and urge the rising heroes of 
the angle to emulate their great forerunners. One vrhole side of 
the dining-room, you see, is parcelled out in lockers large enough 
to contain the necessary tackle and apparatus ; and each locker 
is neatly painted, and bears the name of the amateur to whom 
the contents belong. These — and their number is not small — 
are the regular subscribing members of the angling fraternity; 
and here on every Sunday throughout the summer, unless the 
weather be very bad indeed, they muster strong, often arriv- 
ing while the dew is yet on the grass, and pursue their 
silent pleasures till dinner, steaming on the table at two 
o'clock, calls them together to report progress and recruit their 
strength. 

The conversation on these occasions is characteristic and 
technical, and altogether fishy. 

" Ha, Bubbs !" says Stubbs; " shake a fin, old trout, 
that's the cheese ? You don't look very fresh about the gills 
to-day." 

" Why," responds Bubbs, " you see I started afore light, 
and had but a scaly breakfast — not quite the thing in the 
ground-bait, you see. I'll be all right as a roach after I've 
nibbled a bit, I daresay." 

Happy the man who at the dinner- table can display to the 
view of his admiring comrades some fish of mark — some roach 
of ten, or chub of twenty ounces. Old exploits are gone over 
for the hundredth time, with added particulars at every repe- 
tition. Baits are overhauled and discussed along with the 
brandy and water. Moss- crammed bags, where blood- worms, 
dung- worms, lobs, and lance- tails are kept to scour, are ran- 
sacked for specimens, and notes and maggots are compared, 
and much finny and vermic lore is elicited from the veterans 
of the silent art. The dinner and grog being duly honoured, 



WILD SPOKTS OF THE EAST. 305 

the rod is again resumed beneath the shadowy shelter of the 
trees on the river's brink ; and long after the gloom of night 
has descended upon the gurgling stream, the brethren of the 
angle in populous silence pursue their labours. It is now 
seven years since friend Bubb caught his big chub : the 
monster fish rose at his fly full sixty feet off, on the opposite 
side of the stream, where there is an eddy of the current re- 
bounding from yon projecting piles. It was the work of an 
hour — the hour of Bubb' s life — to bring the " wallopping gen- 
tleman'' safe to land; and ever since, throughout every Sunday 
and holiday of the fishing season, has Bubbs been lashing away 
at the water with his whipping-rod and fifty yards of line, in 
the fond expectation of catching another to match him. " Good- 
luck to your fishing !" say we. "We cannot wait for the next 
bite, but must be off to see what the punters are about in the 
Thames. 

"Patience in a Punt" is the title of an old caricature, repre- 
senting the "elderly gentleman" of hat-and-wig notoriety 
seated on a dilapidated chair in a flat-bottomed boat during 
the pelting of a pitiless storm, from which he is but partially 
sheltered by the skeleton of an umbrella, and, with eyes intent 
on his float, waiting for a bite. The picture is as applicable 
at the present hour to the class for whom it was intended, as it 
was when published forty years ago. The punt is a nonde- 
script kind of boat, with perpendicular sides and square ends. 
The fishing-houses on the banks of the Thames — of which 
there are plenty on both sides of the river, from Putney to 
Kingston, and beyond — are abundantly provided with these 
boats, in which the angler sits upon a chair, and generally baits 
for barbel, the only fish in the waters near London, with the 
exception of the pike, which, from the unwillingness he mani- 
fests to leave his native element, can be said to yield anything 
like sport in the catching. In some parts of the river near 
Twickenham they are exceedingly plentiful at times, and 
thirty or forty pounds' weight of them are not unfrequently 



306 CUEIOSITIES OP LOXDOX LIFE. 

caught in a day by a single rod. There is one thing against 
them, however, and that is, that they are worse than good 
for nothing. They hardly deserve the name of fish, being a 
species of mud vermin armed with snouts, and they taste of 
earth to a degree perfectly nauseous. People every season die 
through eating them, yet they are eagerly sought after, and an 
immense amount of time and expense is annually thrown away 
in their capture. The virtue of patience in connection with 
punt-fishing is exemplified in waiting day after day half the 
season through before you make acquaintance with a single 
barbel. These unsavoury creatures herd together in swarms, 
and migrate from place to place, seeking a new feeding-ground 
when the old one is exhausted, and seldom staying long in one 
spot. As it is never possible to tell where these herds of river 
swine are lying with their snouts in the mud, you may plant 
your punt fifty times before you light upon a swarm, and thus 
cultivate your patience to the highest pitch of perfection. 

In conjunction with the barbel-fishing in the Thames, we 
may notice the bream-fishing in the different docks. It seems 
an odd thing that there should be any connection between the 
corn-laws and fishing for bream ; yet a connection there cer- 
tainly is. Some of the docks appropriated for the reception 
and unlading of vessels freighted with grain became gradually 
well-stocked with this particular fish, which thrives well upon 
a bread diet. Corn that from long hoarding under a high 
duty had become weaviled and worthless, was frequently 
thrown overboard, and that in vast quantities ; and the conse- 
quence was, that enormous specimens of full-fed, aldermanic- 
looking bream were occasionally lugged forth to the light by 
the amateur anglers of the docks. We have seen them hauled 
up to the surface from a depth of twenty feet, looming through 
the green water like the broad, white waistcoat of an alderman 
through the reek of a civic feast. Apparently too fat to wag 
their tails, they dangled supine upon the treacherous hook, 
and only winking a bleared eye under the unwelcome light of 



WILD SPOKTS OF THE EAST. 307 

day, "gave up their quiet being' ' without an attempt at a 
struggle. 

In walking about the streets of London one is struck with 
the singularly great proportion of fishing-tackle shops, taken 
in connection with the actual requirements of the population. 
There are some districts literally crammed with them — quiet, 
retired spots generally, where the traffic in other things is 
small, and the passers-by comparatively few. The key to this 
apparent riddle will be found in the fact, that the London 
makers supply the greater part of the kingdom — that nearly 
the whole of the fresh- water fishing- tackle of England is the 
produce of London manufactories. The harvest of these 
tradesmen is of course the summer season, and they spare no 
pains to make it as profitable as may be. At any of these 
shops you may purchase liberty to fish in private ponds or 
streams, situated, some of them, in distant counties, and con- 
tract for board and lodging at a moderate rate, or at any rate 
you choose, during your stay. 

But we must proceed summarily to notice the winter field- 
sports of the indigenous Cockney with dog and gun, or with 
gun and no dog, as it may happen. Of this class of sportsmen 
there is no variety : the species is one and the same, and you 
might almost fancy it is the same individual you meet with 
everywhere, turn your face in what direction you will out of 
town on a Sunday in winter. He is a sort of hybrid specimen, 
half-artizan, half-mendicant, with a dash of the area sneak. 
Unwashed, untrimmed, and you may be sure unlicensed, he 
saunters forth with his hands in his pockets ; his gun, a long 
iron-barrelled, rusty old flint, balanced under his arm ; while 
his unctuous rags flutter in the wind. He is followed at a 
little distance by a half-starved, unwilling whelp, which is too 
well acquainted with the vigour of his master's toe to venture 
his lean and lank anatomy within kicking distance, and which 
cannot always be seduced by the combined allurements of 



308 CTJEIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

oaths, whistlings, and peltings, to participate in the day's 
sport. He carries his powder and shot in his pocket, and 
measures the charge with the bowl of a tobacco-pipe ; and his 
game is anything that flies or runs, from a crow to a water-rat. 
His impatience for sport seldom allows him to straggle farther 
than the brick-fields, which on all sides of London constitute 
the line of demarcation between the country and the town. 
Here he loads his piece and his short pipe, and with the latter 
firmly gripped by his teeth, prowls among the half-baked 
bricks, waging war among the sparrows and wagtails unfor- 
tunate enough to come in his way. He is the terror of the 
cottagers and gardeners of the suburbs, and the admiration of 
a cluster of ragged urchins, who gather round him and do his 
despotic bidding with alacrity. He never aims at a bird on 
the wing ; and never, if he can help it, pulls the trigger with- 
out first securing a convenient resting-place for his long barrel. 
With all these precautions he considers himself fortunate if he 
kills once out of three times ; and all the dead sparrows he 
carries home cost him at least ten times their weight in lead. 
"We have met him more than once in the custody of the police- 
man, marching off to the station for sending shot through cot- 
tage windows, or leaping garden-fences after maimed sparrows. 
It is fortunate for the public that his recreation is generally 
over early in the day. By one o'clock the public-house is 
open, and even though his ammunition be not by that time all 
shot away, as is generally the case, he cannot resist the vision 
of the pewter-pot, which rises before his imagination as the 
destined hour draws near. Sometimes a wild ambition seizes 
him ; he will learn to shoot flying, and then you may per- 
chance come upon him in some retired field under Highgate 
Hill, in company with some congenial spirit, furnished with a 
luckless pigeon tied by the leg, at which these considerate 
sportsmen fire by turns, as the miserable bird rises in the air 
to the length of the string. The last time we witnessed this 



WILD SP0ETS OF THE EAST. 309 

• delectable sport, the string was severed by the twentieth dis- 
charge, and the unwounded bird got clear off, to the mortal 
chagrin of the pair of brutes. 

The purlieus of Whitechapel and some other districts of 
London are yet disgraced by the disgustingly-cruel and sense- 
less exhibitions of dog-fights, badger-baitings, and rat- 
slaughters; in which latter spectacle of barbarity certain 
wretches in human shape, envious of the reputation of the 
celebrated dog Billy, have aspired to emulate his exploits, 
and are actually seen to enter the arena with a hundred or 
more live rats, which they are backed, or back themselves, 
to kill with their teeth alone in a given time ! The cock- 
pit, too, yet survives, and mains are fought in secret and out 
of ear- shot of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to 
Animals. These and similar brutalities, however, — thanks 
to the dawn of a better feeling and a more enlightened self- 
respect among the lower orders — are very much on the wane, 
and it may be fairly hoped will hardly survive the present 
generation of Cockney sportsmen, 



310 



UNFASHIONABLE CLUES. 



It is with a feeling doubtless somewhat analogous to that of 
the angler, that the London shopkeeper from time to time 
regards the moneyless crowds who throng in gaping admiration 
around the tempting display he makes in his window. His 
admirers and the fish, however, are in different circumstances : 
the one won't bite if they have no mind ; the others can't bite 
if they should have all the mind in the world. Yet the shop- 
keeper manages better than the angler ; for while the fish are 
deaf to the charming of the latter, charm he never so wisely, 
the former is able, at a certain season of the year, to convert 
the moneyless gazers into ready-money customers. This he 
does by the force of logic. " You are thinking of Christmas," 
says he — "yes, you are; and you long to have a plum- 
pudding for that day — don't deny it. Well, but you can't 
have it, think as much as you will ; it is impossible as you 
manage at present. But I'll tell you how to get the better of 
the impossibility. In twenty weeks we shall have Christmas 
here : now if, instead of spending every week all you earn, 
you will hand me over sixpence or a shilling out of your 
wages, I'll take care of it for you, since you can't take care of 
it for yourself : and you shall have the full value out of my 
shop any time in Christmas-week, and be as merry as you 
like, and none the poorer." 

This logic is irresistible. Tomkins banks his sixpence for a 



UNFASHIONABLE CLTJBS. 311 

plum- pudding and the etceteras with Mr. Allspice the grocer; 
and this identical pudding he enjoys the pleasure of eating 
half-a-dozen times over in imagination before the next instal- 
ment is due. He at length becomes so fond of the flavour, 
that he actually — we know, for we have seen him do it — he 
actually, to use his own expression, "goes in for a goose" 
besides with Mr. Pluck the poulterer. Having once passed 
the Rubicon, of course he cannot go back ; the weekly sixpences 
must be paid come what will ; it would be disgraceful to be a 
defaulter. So he practises a little self-denial, for the sake of 
a little self-esteem — and the goose and pudding in perspective. 
He finds, to his astonishment, that he can do quite as much 
work with one pot of beer a day as he could with two, and he 
drops the superfluous pot, and not only pays his instalments to 
the Christmas-bank, but gets a spare shilling in his pocket 
besides. Thus under the tuition of the shopkeeper, he learns 
the practice of prudence in provisioning his family with plum- 
pudding, and imbibes the first and foremost of the household 
virtues, on the same principle as a wayward child imbibes 
physic — out of regard to the dainty morsel that is to come 
afterwards. 

Passing one day last autumn through a long and populous 
thoroughfare on the southern side of the Thames, we happened 
to light upon Mr. Allspice's appeal to the consciences and the 
pockets of the pudding-eating public. "If you are wise," said 
the admonitory placard, " you will lose no time in joining 
Allspice's Plum-pudding Club." Eemembering the retort of 
a celebrated quack, " Give me all the fools that come this 
way for my customers, and you are welcome to the wise men," 
we must own we felt rather doubtful of the prosperity of the 
puddings ; but having an interest in the matter, we resolved, 
notwithstanding, to ascertain, if possible, whether the Wisdom 
who uttereth her voice in the streets had on this special 
occasion spoken to any purpose, and whether any, and how 
many, had proved themselves wise in the acceptation of Mr. 



312 CTJEIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

Allspice. On making the necessary inquiries after the affair 
had gone off, we learned, to our surprise and gratification, that 
the club had been entirely successful. Upwards of a hundred 
persons of a class who are never worth half-a-crown at a time, 
had subscribed sixpence a week each for eighteen weeks, and 
thus entitled themselves to nine shillings' worth of plum- 
pudding ingredients, besides a certain quantity of tea and 
sugar. Thus the club had prospered exceedingly, and had 
been the instrument of introducing comfort and festive enjoy- 
ment to no small number of persons who might, and in all 
probability would, have had little to eat or drink, and, conse- 
quently, little cause for merriment, at that season. This is 
really a very pleasant fact to contemplate, connected though 
it be with a somewhat ludicrous kind of ingenuity, which 
must be exercised in order to bring it about. To anybody but 
a London shopkeeper, the attempt would appear altogether 
hopeless, to transform a hundred poor persons, who were 
never worth half-a-crown a piece from one year's end to the 
other, into so many nine shilling customers ; and yet the 
thing is done, and done, too, by the London grocer in a man- 
ner highly satisfactory, and still more advantageous to his 
customers. Is it too much to imagine that the lesson of provi- 
dent forethought thus agreeably learned by multitudes of the 
struggling classes — for these clubs abound everywhere in 
London, and their members must be legion — have a moral 
effect upon at least a considerable portion of them ? If one 
man finds a hundred needy customers wise enough to relish a 
plum-pudding of their own providing, surely they will not all 
be such fools as to repudiate the practice of that very pru- 
dence which procured them the enjoyment, and brought mirth 
and gladness to their firesides. Never think it ! They shall 
go on to improve, take our word for it ; and having learned 
prudence from plum-pudding, and generosity from goose — for 
your poor man is always the first to give a slice or two of the 
breast, when he has it, to a sick neighbour — they shall learn 



UNFASHIONABLE CLUBS. 313 

temperance from tea, and abstinence if they choose, from 
coffee, and ever so many other good qualities from ever so 
many other good things ; and from having been wise enough 
to join the grocer's Plum-pudding Club, they shall end by 
becoming prosperous enough to join the TVhittington Club, or 
the Gresham Club, or the Athenaeum Club, or the Travellers* 
Club ; or the House of Commons, or the House of Lords 
either, for all that you, or we, or anybody else, can say or do 
to the contrary. 

We know nothing of the original genius who first hit upon 
this mode of indoctrinating the lower orders in a way so much 
to their advantage ; we hope, however, as there is little reason 
to doubt, that he found his own account in it, and reaped his 
well- deserved reward. Whoever he was, his example has 
been well followed for many years past. In the poorer and 
more populous districts of the metropolis, this practice of 
making provision for inevitable wants, by small subscriptions 
paid in advance, prevails to a large extent. As winter sets 
in, almost every provision- dealer, and other traders as well, 
proffers a compact to the public, which he calls a club, though 
it is more of the nature of a savings-bank, seeing that, at the 
expiration of the subscribing period, every member is a creditor 
of the shop to the amount of his own investments, and nothing 
more. Thus, besides the Plum-pudding Clubs, there are Coal 
Clubs, by which the poor man who invests Is. a week for five 
or six of the summer months, gets a ton of good coal laid in 
for the winter's consumption before the frost sets in and the 
coal becomes dear. Then there is the Goose Club, which the 
wiser members manage among themselves by contracting with 
a country dealer, and thus avoid the tipsy consummation of 
the public-house, where these clubs have mostly taken shelter. 
Again, there is the Twelfth-cake Club, which comes to a head 
soon after Christmas, and is more of a lottery than a club, 
inasmuch as the large cakes are raffled for, and the losers, if 
they get anything, get but a big bun for their pains and 

p 



314 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

penalties. All these clubs, it will be observed, are plants of 
"winter-growth, or at least of winter-fruiting, having for their 
object the provision of something desirable or indispensable in 
the winter season. There is, however, another and a very 
different species of club, infinitely more popular than any of 
the above, the operations of which are aboundingly visible 
throughout the warm and pleasant months of summer, and 
which may be, and sometimes is, called the Excursion Club. 

The Excursion Club is a provision which the working and 
labouring classes of London have got up for themselves, to 
enable them to enjoy, at a charge available to their scanty 
means, the exciting pleasures — which are as necessary as food 
or raiment to their health and comfort — of a change of air 
and scene. It is managed in a simple way. The foreman of 
a workshop, or the father of a family in some confined court, 
or perhaps some manageress of a troop of working -girls, con- 
tracts with the owner of a van for the hire of his vehicle and 
the services of a driver for a certain day. More frequently 
still, the owner of the van is the prime mover in the business, 
but then the trip is not so cheap. The members club their 
funds, the men paying Is. each, the wives, 6d., the children, 
3d. or 4d. ; and any poor little ragged orphan urchin, who 
may be hanging about the workshop, gets accommodated with 
a borrowed jacket and trousers, and a gratuitous face- washing 
from 3Irs. Grundy, and is taken for nothing, and well fed into 
the bargain. The cost, something over a guinea, is easily 
made up, and if any surplus remains, why, then, they hire a 
fiddler to go along with them. On the appointed morning, at 
an early hour, rain or shine, they flock to the rendezvous to 
the number of forty or fifty — ten or a dozen more or less is a 
trifle not worth mentioning. Each one carries his own pro- 
visions, and loaded with baskets, cans, bottles, and earthen- 
jars, mugs and tea-kettles, in they bundle, and off they jog — 
pans rattling, women chattering, kettles clinking, children 
crowing, fiddle scraping, and men smoking — at the rate of 



UNFASHIONABLE CLUBS. 315 

six or seven miles an hour, to Hampton Court or Epping 
Forest. It is impossible for a person who has never witnessed 
these excursions in the height of summer, to form an adequate 
notion of the merry and exciting nature of the relaxation they 
afford to a truly prodigious number of the hard-working 
classes. Returning from Kingston to London one fine Monday 
morning in June last, we met a train of these laughter-loaded 
vans, measuring a full mile in length, and which must have 
consisted of threescore or more vehicles, most of them provided 
with music of some sort, and adorned with flowers and green 
boughs. As they shot one at a time past the omnibus on 
which we sat, we were saluted by successive volleys of 
mingled mirth and music, and by such constellations of merry- 
faced mortals in St. Monday garb, as would have made a 
sunshine under the blackest sky that ever gloomed. Arrived 
at Hampton Court, the separate parties encamp under the 
trees in Bushy Park, where they amuse themselves the live- 
long day in innocent sports, for which your Londoner has at 
bottom a most unequivocal and hearty relish. They will 
most likely spend a few hours in wandering through the 
picture-galleries in the palace, then take a stroll in the 
exquisite gardens, where the young fellow who is thoughtless 
enough to pluck a flower for his sweetheart, is instantly and 
infallibly condemned to drag a heavy iron roller up and down 
the gravel- walk, to the amusement of a thousand or two of 
grinning spectators. Having seen the palace and the gardens, 
they pay a short visit, perhaps, to the monster grape-vine, with 
its myriads of clusters of grapes, all of which her gracious 
Majesty is supposed to devour ; and then they return to their 
dinner beneath some giant chestnut-tree in the park. The 
cloth is spread at the foot of the huge trunk; the gashed 
joints of the Sunday's baked meats, flanked by a very moun- 
tainous gooseberry pie, with crusty loaves and sections of 
cheese and pats of butter, cut a capital figure among the 
heterogeneous contribution of pitchers, preserve-jars, tin-cans, 

p 2 



316 CUPvIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

mugs and jugs, shankless rummers and wine-glasses, and 
knives and forks of every size and pattern, from the balance 
handles and straight blades of to-day, to the wooden haft and 
cnrly-nosed cimetar of a century back. Their sharpened 
appetites make short work of the cold meats and pies. Treble 
X of somebody's own corking fizzes forth from brown jar and 
black bottle, and if more is wanted, it is fetched from the 
neighbouring tavern. Dinner done, the fiddle strikes up, and 
a dance on the greensward by the young people, while the old 
ones, stretched under the trees, enjoy a quiet gossip and a 
refreshing pipe, fills up the afternoon. There is always some- 
body at this crisis who is neither too old to dance nor too young 
to smoke a gossipping pipe, and so he does both at intervals — 
rushing now into the dance, drawn by the irresistible attrac- 
tion of the fiddle, and now sidling back again to his smoke- 
pnffing chums, impelled by the equally resistless charms of 
tobacco. Then and therefore he is branded as a deserter, and 
a file of young lasses lay hands on him, and drag him forth in 
custody to the dance; and after a good scolding from laughing 
lips, and a good drubbing from white handkerchiefs, they 
compromise the business at last by allowing him to dance with 
his pipe in his mouth. 

By five o'clock, Mrs. Grundy has managed, with the con- 
nivance of Jack the driver, somehow or other to boil the ket- 
tle, and a cup of tea is ready for all who are inclined to par- 
take. The young folks for the most part prefer the dance : 
they can have tea any day — they will not dance on the grass 
again till next year perhaps ; so they make the most of their 
time. By and by, the fiddler's elbow refuses to wag any 
longer : he is perfectly willing himself, as he says, " to play 
till all's blue ; but you see," he adds, " bones wont do it." 
"Never mind," says the Beau Nash of the day : " sack your 
badger, old boy, and go and get some resin. Now, then, for 
kiss in the ring !" Then while the fiddler gets his resin, 
which means anything he likes to eat or drink, the whole 



UNFASHIONABLE CLUBS. 317 

party, perhaps amounting to three or four van loads in all, 
form into a circle for " kiss in the ring !" The ring is one 
uproarious round of frolic and laughter, which would "hold 
both its sides," but that it is forced to hold its neighbours' 
hands with both its own, under which the flying damsel who 
has to be caught and kissed bobs in and out, doubling like a 
hare, till she is out of breath, and is overtaken at last, and 
led bashfully into the centre of the group, to suffer the awful 
penalty of the law. "While this popular pastime is prolonged 
to the last moment, the van is getting ready to return ; the 
old folks assist in stowing away the empty baskets and ves- 
sels ; and an hour or so before sun-down, or it may be half 
an hour after, the whole party are remounted, and on their 
way home again, where they arrive, after a jovial ride, weary 
with enjoyment, and with matter to talk about for a month to 
come. 

At Epping Forest, the scene is very different, but not a whit 
the less lively. There are no picture-galleries, or pleasure- 
gardens, but there is the forest to roam in, full of noble trees, 
in endless sinuous avenues, crowned with the " scarce intru- 
ding sky," among which the joyous holiday-makers form a 
finer picture than was ever painted yet. Then there are 
friendly foot-races and jumping-matches, and leap-frogging 
and blackberry in g, and foot-balling, and hockey-and-trapping, 
and many other games besides, in addition to the dancing and 
the ring-kissing. Epping and Hainault Forests are essentially 
the lungs of "Whitechapel and Spitalfields. Their leafy 
shades are invaded all the summer long by the van-borne hosts 
of laborious poverty. Clubs, whose members invest but a 
penny a week, start into existence as soon as the leaves begin 
to sprout in the spring ; with the first gush of summer, the 
living tide begins to flow into the cool bosom of the forest ; 
and until late in the autumn, unless the weather is prema- 
turely wintry, there is no pause for a day or an hour of sun- 
shine in the rush of health- seekers to the green shades. The 



318 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

flat has gone forth from the government for the destruction of 
these forests, for the felling of the trees and the inclosure of 
the land. "Will the public permit the execution of the bar- 
barous decree ? We trust not. 

Notwithstanding all that has been said, and so justly said, 
of the notorious improvidence of the poor, it will be seen 
from the above hasty sketches, that they yet can and do help 
themselves to many things which are undeniably profitable 
and advantageous to them : they only want, in fact, a motive 
for so doing — a foregone conviction that the thing desiderated 
is worth having. Now, here is ground for hope — an opening, 
so to speak, for the point of the wedge. That the very poor 
may be taught to practise self-denial, in the prospect of a fu- 
ture benefit, these clubs have proved ; and we may confess to 
a prejudice in their favour, not merely from what they have 
accomplished, but from a not unreasonable hope, that they 
may perchance foster a habit which will lead to far better 
things than even warm chimney-corners, greenwood holidays, 
roast geese, and plum-pudding. 



319 



CHBISTMAS (1851) IN THE METKOPOLIS. 



The first indication of the approach of Christmas — a literal 
" note of preparation/' generally steals oyer us in this crowded 
city in a dream of the night. Somewhere about the beginning 
of December, in the small hour " ayont the twal'," a sense of 
something Elysian qualifies one's quiet slumber ; then a faint 
and distant sound of sweet harmony glides agreeably upon the 
ear, and grows louder and louder, and we dream rapturous 
dreams, and float among a countless host of singing seraphs 
bright — on, and on, and on, when, suddenly, with a start, one 
wakes to find the dream not all a dream. Eor there, beneath 
your window, is a band of Erench-horns, flutes, oboes, and 
trombones, warbling the pastoral symphony of Handel with 
low-toned instruments, whose quiet voices thrill you with 
pleasure. Pausing in your breath, you drink in every note, 
and listen greedily till the strain has ceased ; then a stentorian 
voice rings through the fog and mist and moisture, invoking 
in behalf of all and sundry within hearing, "a merry Christmas 
and a happy new-year." Then you drop off once more to 
sleep, in the dreamy intervals of which the strain is renewed 
again and again ; and you rise in the morning with the full- 
blown consciousness that Christmas is at hand, and that all the 
world, and the London world in particular, is bound to be as 
merry and as happy as it can be. 

So the " waits " having thus warned you of the advent of 



o 



20 CURIOSITIES OF LOXUOX LIFE. 



the great annual fact, you begin to look about in your walks 
abroad for the verification of it ; and though it yet wants three 
weeks or more of Christmas- day, there is no lack of indications 
of what is expected. In anticipation of the liberal expendi- 
ture of ready cash — the most interesting consideration of the 
season to a London trader — and which expenditure every 
shopkeeper is dutifully anxious to engross as far as possible to 
himself, a thousand different persuasive devices are already 
placarded and profusely exhibited. "Christmas presents' 
forms a monster line in the posters on the walls and in the 
shop-windows. Infantine appeals in gigantic type cover the 
hoardings. "Do, Papa, Buy Me" so-and-so; so-and-so being 
blotted out in a few hours by " The ]S"ew Patent Wig," so that 
the appeal remains a perplexing puzzle to affectionate parents, 
till both are in turn blotted out by a third poster, announcing 
the sacrifice of 120,000 gipsy cloaks and winter mantles at 
less than half the cost-price. Cheap Christmas books are a 
part of every bookseller's display ; Christmas fashions fill the 
drapers' windows, and stand on full- dressed poles in the door- 
ways. There are Christmas lamps, lustres, and candelabra ; 
Christmas diamonds made of paste, and Brumagem jewellery 
for glittering show, as well as Christmas furniture for parties 
and routs, to be hired for the season — carving, gilding, hang- 
ings, beds ; everything which, being wanted but once a year, 
it may be cheaper to hire than to purchase or to keep on hand. 

The slopsellers especially are in a state of prodigious ac- 
tivity, taking time by the forelock, and pushing their un- 
wieldly advertising vans out in every direction, freighted with 
puffs of their appropriate Christmas garb — Hebrew harness 
for a Christian festival. These are a few of the broad palms 
thus early stretched forth to catch a share of the golden 
shower about to fall. 

But these and such as these are very minor and subordinate 
preparations. Eating and drinking, after all, are the chief 
and paramount obligations of the Christmas season. As the 



CHlLlS-niAS IN THE METROPOLIS. 321 

month grows older, the great gastronomic anniversary is 
heralded at every turn by signs more abundant and less equi- 
vocal. Among the dealers in eatables, one and all of whom 
are now putting in their sickles for the harvest, the grocer, 
who is independent of the weather, leads off the dance. Long 
before the holly and the mistletoe have come to town, he 
has received his stock of Christmas fruit, on the sale of which, 
it may be, the profit or loss of the whole year's trading is de- 
pending. For months past, he has been occupied at every 
leisure hour in breaking to pieces the rocky mass of con- 
glomerate gravel, dirt, sticks, and fruit which, under the 
designation of currants, came to him from the docks ; and it is 
not before he has got rid of near half the gross weight, that 
the indispensable currants are fit to meet the eye of the public. 
This is one of the nuisances of his trade, and forms a ceremony 
which, as every housekeeper knows well enough, is but indif- 
ferently performed after all. The currants, tolerably cleaned 
and professionally moistened, occupy a conspicuous place in 
his window, along with the various sorts of raisins — Sultanas, 
Huscatels, and Yalencias — dates, prunes, and preserves in 
pots, and candied lemons and spices, built up in the most 
attractive and gaudy piles and pyramids, edged round with 
boxes of foreign confections, adorned with admirable speci- 
mens of the lithographic art, and all ticketed in clean new 
figures at astonishingly low prices. The gin-shops, or, to 
speak more politely, the wine-vaults, now begin to brush up. 
They wash and varnish over their soiled paint, cleanse the out- 
sides and decorate the insides of their faded saloons ; and con- 
cocting new combinations of fire-water, prepare for thirsty 
poverty new incentives to oblivious intemperance. Every 
third-rate inn and back-street public-house is the centre and 
focus of a goose-club, the announcement of which stares you 
in the face twenty times in the course of a day's walk. They 
owe their existence to the improvidence and want of economy 
of the labouring and lowest classes. A small weekly sum 

p 3 



322 craiosiTiES oe London lite. 

subscribed for thirteen weeks, entitles each subscriber to a 
goose ; and by increasing his weekly dole, he may insure, be- 
sides the goose, a couple of bottles of spirits. The distribu- 
tion of geese and gin takes place on Christmas -eve ; and in 
large working establishments, where the goose-club is a 
favourite institution, and where, for the most part, the inn- 
keeper is not allowed to meddle, the choice of the birds is 
decided by the throw of the dice, the thrower of the highest 
cast having the first choice. We will drop in at the hour of dis- 
tribution, and witness the consummation of one of these affairs. 
But time rolls on, and the great cattle-show in Baker- street 
has come off. The pig of half a ton weight has held his last 
levee, and grunted a welcome to the lords and ladies of the 
aristocracy, and to hundreds of thousands of less distinguished 
visitors. The prize animals are all sold, and marched or 
carted off to their new owners. The periodical insanity of the 
butchers has been developed as strongly as ever. The love of 
fame glows beneath a blue apron as fiercely as beneath a dia- 
mond star ; and determined to cut a respectable figure in the 
carnival which is approaching, Mr. Stickem does not hesitate 
to purchase a beast, which he knows well enough will hardly 
cut up for five- and- thirty pounds, at the cost of seventy. 
What of that ? The bubble reputation outweighs the love of 
lucre, and if he is satisfied with his bargain, who shall com- 
plain ? Happy is the butcher who has been enabled to pur- 
chase a prize- ox; he is not disposed to hide his candle under 
a bushel. If he have room in front of his shop, he will tether 
his dear bargain, during the short hours of daylight, to a post 
in front of his doorway — where, a good fat ox being a special 
favourite with the public, he is patted and petted by them as 
they stop in groups to admire his vast proportions. The un- 
wieldly beast, ornamented with ribbons and favours, gazes 
moodily around him, now plucks a mouthful of hay, and now 
utters a sonorous bellow — a lament for the pastures of his 
ealfhood. 



CHRISTMAS IN THE METROPOLIS. 323 

Let us now transport ourselves to Covent-garden on the eve 
of Christmas- week. It is late on Friday night, and to-morrow 
is the last Saturday's market before Christmas-day. The mar- 
ket, which for the last two months has been redolent of the 
damp odour of the sere and yellow leaf, is now to blossom for 
a few short hours with renewed brilliancy. The bells of the 
city have not yet struck the hours of midnight, when from the 
various avenues which lead into Covent-garden, the sound of 
wheels is heard on all sides, and a continuous stream of carts 
and waggons pours into the open space, which, in less than an 
hour, is rendered impassable to any but adventurous foot pas- 
sengers. At the first glance, the whole burden of the num- 
berless wains appears one mass of evergreens ; it looks as 
though Eirnam Wood had actually come to Dunsinane. Im- 
mense quantities of holly and fir, with here and there a bough 
of laurel, show the demand of the Londoners for winter verdure. 
The mistletoe-bough, which has hung like an inverted goose- 
berry bush from the old apple-tree all the summer long, and a 
fine specimen of which is good at this nick of time for half-a- 
guinea, to say nothing of the kissing, which we don't presume 
to value, appears this year in quantities truly enormous, and, 
we should think, unprecedented. The market now presents 
a noisy and interesting spectacle. The bawling and roaring of 
drivers, the backing of wains to make room for privileged 
new-comers, the chaffering of dealers, who are not at all 
angry, passionate as they seem, the grappling feet of horses, 
and fifty minor sounds, perplex the ear, as much as the dim 
vision does the eye, of dark figures flitting rapidly about 
hither and thither, by the light of a hundred lanterns con- 
stantly dodging up and down, and the steady glare of the gas 
overhead. In the midst of all this apparent confusion, how- 
ever, business is doing and done by wholesale. Ey three or four 
o'clock, a good half of the various wares, prickly as well as 
palatable, brought to market, are transferred to new proprie- 
tors, and are already off, most of them without breaking bulk, 



324 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

to different quarters of the town. Long before the dawn, the 
din has ceased altogether, and the cause of it has vanished. 
The traders of the market are mostly on the spot before four 
o'clock, and are now active in preparing the show of winter 
fruit, which is to adorn the tables of the wealthy in the coming 
festival. Before ten o'clock, the arcade is in trim for visitors 
and customers, and a tempting array of all that the depth of 
winter can produce is ranged in artistic order. There are 
apples of all hues and sizes, among which the brown russet, 
the golden bob, and the Bibston pippins, are pre-eminent. 
Among the pears are the huge winter-pear, the delicious 
Chamiontel, and the bishop' s-thumb. Then there are foreign 
and hot-house grapes, transparent and luscious ; large English 
pine-apples, pomegranates, brown biffins from Norfolk, and 
baskets of soft medlars ; Kent cob-nuts, filberts and foreign 
nuts of outlandish shapes, all gaily mingled and mixed up 
with flowers of all hues, natural and artificial, and both, and 
neither ; bouquets of real grasses tinted to an unreal colour, 
immortelles that were never green, stained into evergreen ; 
weeds and wayside flowers dried to death, and then dyed of 
various hues to live and blossom again, scented with delicious 
odours which nature never gave them; flowers cut from coloured 
paper, flowers modelled in wax, flowers of tinted cotton 
fabrics, flowers carved delicately from turnips and beet-root — 
all in bright and brilliant contrast with the dark-green holly 
and the sere and russet hue of the winter fruit. Notwith- 
standing this artificial attempt at colour, the show is, on the 
whole, much more suggestive to the palate than captivating to 
the eye. You cannot help noticing a prodigious number of 
sapling firs, some transplanted into pots, and trained^ cropped, 
and clipped into regular shapes for Christmas-trees ; most of 
these are sold naked as brought to market, but some few are 
loaded with fruit, oranges, lemons, and clustered grapes, and 
liberally adorned with imitative flowers and wreaths. The 
confectioners purchase these trees, and load the branches with 



CHEISTMAS IN THE METROPOLIS. 325 

choice delicacies under various disguises, and will present each 
member of a customer's family with an appropriate token 
of affectionate remembrance. This practice of plucking fruit 
from the Christmas tree, which is growing more and more 
prevalent in English families, is of German origin, and is said 
to owe its increasing popularity in England to the custom of 
the royal family, whose Christmas-tree is pretty sure to be 
fully described in the fashionable journals. 

But we must leave the market to the customers, who are 
now thronging in, and pursue our way eastward. The weather 
is precisely in that condition which any alteration would im- 
prove — close, warm, and wet, with a drizzling rain, and 
without the remotest sign of what every butcher, fishmonger, 
and poulterer is praying for — a frost. But every phase of 
the weather has its peculiar phenomena in this critical season ; 
one is visible in the spare and comparatively Lenten aspect, 
as yet, of the butchers' shops. They are afraid to expose to 
show their prize meat ; and the fat cattle, though probably 
all by this time slain, are left hanging in the slaughter-house. 
So the butchers make an extra show with evergreens and saw- 
dust, and a few — only a few — prize sheep, whose broad 
backs bear their history inscribed in inch-long characters, 
declaring where and by whom they were bred and fed. In a 
few hours they will be cut up, and then you may learn, if 
you like, from similar labels, by whom each joint will be 
eaten. That smart-looking countryman yonder, standing on 
the kerbstone, he with the green wide-awake, cutty smock- 
frock, corduroy breeches, and short, heavy high -lows, is 
another of the phenomena whose appearance here is due to 
warm weather in winter. Crowding and fluttering round his 
feet are a group of fifty hungry ducks, whom he, their cau- 
tious owner, has not dared to kill, lest in so doing he should 
kill his profits ; so, three days ago, he brought his gobbling 
friends alive to market, and has already reduced their num- 
ber to one-half. The famished birds are pecking desperately 



326 CTTKIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

at a few grains of barley, which he occasionally dispenses 
from his pocket in homoeopathic doses, merely to keep them 
from straying away. He is intent on doing business; hear 
him: (Duck- dealer loquitur) " Sure to be fresh, marm — all 
alive, you see ; kill 'em when you want 'em — pick and choose 
a couple for three- and- six, say three bob, marm. Kill 'em for 
you? Certainly, marm. "Which is your fancy, marm ? Ha! 
I see you knows what a duck is. Here, dilly ! dilly ! come 
and be killed, you fool. There, marm, that's the way we 
doos it, quite skyantific, you see. Stop, marm, let me put 
'em in the basket j they'll lie under the apples snug as nine- 
pence — that's it. Thanky, marm. Yar — ar! Sold agin, 
and got the money. "Who's for the next sample ? Who says 
ducks? — ducks an' apple-sarse ! that's a tidy tightener, I 
reckon," &c. 

Turning into a side street, for the sake of avoiding the 
greasy mud, trodden and churned by myriads of feet to the 
consistence of bird-lime, we come upon another phenomenon, 
consequent, in some degree, upon the warm and close weather. 
We are suddenly confronted by an enormous serried phalanx, 
full fifty yards in solid depth, of wayworn, spit- doomed geese, 
waddling wearily forwards, their hungry bills gaping aloft in 
the air, and every feather sodden with moisture, and dyed to 
the hue of London mud. Unlike their renowned ancestors, 
the guardian fowls of Rome, they have not a syllable to say 
for themselves. Fifteen mortal miles have the whole troop of 
nearly 1000 waddled painfully since, by the cold starlight, 
they were roused from their roost, and compelled to sally forth 
under the conduct of the driver, who, armed with a wand ten 
feet long, which answers his purpose better than any dog, 
with whom the geese would inevitably do battle, has under- 
taken the patient and difficult task of consigning them to their 
final friend and patron, the poulterer. He has to enter Lon- 
don, and pick the whole way to his destination through side 
streets and by-ways, in order to escape collision with cabs and 



CHKISTMAS IN THE METROPOLIS. 327 

omnibuses, which would make short work with his intractable 
flock. The whole regiment are completely exhausted by the 
long march; each one presents a sorry spectacle of individual 
distress : with empty crops and parched throats, heads erect 
and gasping for air, they look wildly round, and press feebly 
yet hurriedly on, without emitting the slightest sound. If a 
single " quack" would save the Capitol, it would not be 
uttered. These unfortunate candidates for a fellowship with 
sage and onions, to obtain which they must be plucked as a 
preparatory step, are bred and trained, with a view to this 
especial promotion, in Epping and Hainault Forests, whence 
whole armies are despatched, in dead and living detachments, 
at Michaelmas and Christmas. A good portion of them die a 
patriot's death on their native soil, and escape the misery of 
such a journey as these have undergone ; but vast numbers 
are every year, especially when the weather is unfavourable 
for killing, condemned to execute a forced march upon the 
capital, where they operate as a corps de reserve, awaiting the 
exigencies of the poulterer, whose knife, like the sword of 
Damocles, hangs suspended over their heads, with this differ- 
ence, however, that it is sure to fall and to slay. It is no 
unusual thing to meet the drover of this feathery herd strung 
round the waist with half-a-dozen disabled travellers, who, 
from accident or weariness, have broken down on the way. 

On account of the weather, and the four clear days which 
have yet to elapse before Christmas, Saturday's market is, 
comparatively speaking, but a flat affair, and presents nothing 
particularly worthy of record. Sunday comes on with a drab- 
coloured sky, fringed with fog, and dripping with occasional 
warm showers. The fishers and fleshers fret at their devo- 
tions, and pray for seasonable weather. The sky is clear at 
eventide, and the stars shine out. Yain promise ! Monday is 
ten times worse — not a breath of air stirs — the whole vast 
city is seething in one warm vapour-bath — the thermometer 
stands almost at " temperate/ ' and ten minutes' walk wets 



82 8 craiosiTiEs of loxlox life. 

you through in spite of your umbrella. Still, now or never 
is the time for display, and forth comes everything into fair 
daylight, such as it is. The mistletoe-boughs, which every- 
where droop pendent where comestibles are to be sold, are 
dripping with moisture, and every milk-white berry seems to 
distil a crystal drop. Greengrocers, fishmongers, and fruit- 
erers are embowered in greenery ; but they are- busy as bees 
in their damp hives, unpacking, packing, and arranging and 
despatching goods to weather-bound customers. The green- 
grocer galls the kibe of the grocer, and sells all the materials 
for plum-pudding, as well as vegetables for the pot and fruit 
for the dessert. The fishmonger, who is completely built in 
with barrels of oysters, trenches upon the domain of the 
poulterer ; and to fish of all flavours, fresh and salt, from the 
smelt to the cod, adds geese and turkeys, and barn-door fowls. 
The butcher now marshals his meat — the mutton in carcasses, 
the beef in quarters, such quarters! — in the most imposing 
order. But the relentless clouds pour forth an unremitting 
flood, and drive us home to a dry room and a cheerful fire. 

Tuesday comes — a glorious day — the sun shining bright, a 
moderate breeze blowing aloft, and the thermometer down to 
47. "All in good time yet," say the shopkeepers; "people 
must eat, that's one comfort." TTe want something besides 
butcher-meat for our Christmas dinner. Let us be off to the 
poulterer's, and see what he has got to show. We shall come 
upon him just round the corner. Here we are. Verily, the 
whole house is feathered like one huge bird, the fabulous roc 
of the Arabian Tales. The list of them defies all our skill in 
ornithology, lumbers there are that we know, and as many 
that are strangers to us — at least with their feathers on. 
Over the door is a pair of enormous swans, though we do not 
see the albatross, measuring nine feet across the wings, which 
we saw in the same place a couple of years back. Above the 
swans are bitterns, herons, hawks ; here a peacock, and there 
a gigantic crane, besides a raven, and an eccentric collection 



CHRIST1IAS IX THE METROPOLIS. 329 

of birds never intended to be eaten, bnt which are only hung 
up aloft to impress the spectator with the indisputable fact, 
that the whole of the tribes of the air are under the potent 
enchantment and subject to the despotic beck and bidding of 
Mr. Pluck — and very proper too. Grouse, pheasants, par- 
tridges, and wild-fowl hang in countless numbers from the 
topmost floor down to the very pavement ; pigeons in dense 
dead flocks ; and snipes, thrushes, and larks bundled together 
by the neck in bulky tassels, fringe the solid breast-work 
of plucked geese and turkeys, which, with heads dangling in 
silent rows, lie close jammed in fleshy phalanx upon the 
groaning shop-boards. Hares in legions, and rabbits by the 
warren, line the walls or hang from the ceiling ; and among 
them here and there the bright feathers of the mallard give a 
touch of colour to the dense masses of brown and gray. 
Gorged as the whole place is with the denizens of the air, 
the forest, the fen, and the farmyard, you are not for a moment 
to suppose that the store before your eyes is anything more 
than a mere indication of the proprietor's doings in the way 
of business. Lest you should fall into the simple error, that 
all this is all he can do, he politely informs you in a placard a 
yard long, that he has levied a contribution upon the county 
of ISTorfolk for thousands of turkeys and tens of thousands of 
geese, which are bound, under a heavy penalty, to be delivered 
within a given time. Think of that ! and in the meanwhile 
look around you, and see what is going on. "While you are 
gazing, the birds are going off by whole coveys. People with 
empty baskets are thronging in, and folks with baskets full 
are crowding out. Look at that stout woman tottering under 
the weight of two turkeys, three geese, a hare, and a brace 
of pheasants, to say nothing of a sucking-pig, stuffed with 
straw, and bearing a sprig of red-berried holly in his mouth, 
with his eye knowingly modelled to a wink, as though he were 
making faces at the destiny which has doomed him to the spit. 
Kext come a jolly-looking butler, and a boy at his heels 



330 curiosities or London life. 

carrying a basket filled with choice game; the butler gets into 
a cab, and the boy, having first hoisted his basket to the top, 
mounts guard by the side of the driver, and off they go. The 
place of the cab is instantly filled by a cart full of slaughtered 
geese, doubtless a part of the immense consignment from 
Norfolk; but the shop doorway is one crush of customers, 
and they can't be got in there — so they go in like bricks, 
being pitched through the open window to a shopman behind 
the counter, who tells them off, and in his turn pitches them 
down an open trap, where a band of ITr. Pluck's pluckers are 
plucking from morning to night and all night long. To-day 
is the great day for business. In matters of eating and drink- 
ing, the Londoner is not given to procrastination when he can 
avoid it ; he has a passion for an extensive choice ; and though 
he want but a sixpenny article, he will walk a mile to buy 
one from a stock of 10,000, rather than take one out of ten 
equally good which are offered at his own door. The appre- 
ciation of this truth has made Ifr. Pluck's fortune, as it has 
made the fortunes of thousands besides. 

But we must leave the poulterer to his traffic, and the 
butcher, and fishmonger, and grocer, and fruiterer, and all who 
have delicacies to sell, not forgetting the confectioner, who, 
up to the eyes in paste, is already preparing the Twelfth-cakes 
for his Christmas- day. They say that these cakes last from 
year to year, and that one which fails to go off in '52 may 
meet with a customer in '53. We know nothing about that, 
but we do know a young artist who has been at work for some 
weeks already, laying very spirited water-colour drawings on 
a ground of sugar, and a very pleasant working ground he 
says it is. 

Christmas- day, bright with sunshine and slightly frosty, 
rises upon London very much like a Sunday, and the streets 
in the morning are thronged by the same bands of steady 
church-goers answering the call of the parish bells. Pull 
service takes place in all the churches, which are profusely 



CHEISTMAS IN THE METKOPOLIS. 331 

decorated with boughs of evergreen. Christmas anthems are 
sung, and Christmas sermons are preached, and Christian 
charity is urged on behalf of the poor. Sermon over, we are 
tempted by the weather to whet our appetite with a walk of 
an hour through the city, in the course of which we encounter 
a hundred different groups, bound unmistakeably for the dinner- 
table of some hospitable host : charming young lasses, with 
little whity-brown parcels held between finger and thumb at 
one corner, and containing the new ribbon which is to make 
its first appearance on the fair neck at to-day's party ; elder 
matrons carrying their spick-and-span-new caps in pin-fastened 
packets a shade larger ; new-married couples, the husband 
with his young wife's satin shoes sticking out of his coat- 
pocket behind, and some flimsy mystery in tissue-paper in his 
hand, and not half hidden, as he thinks it is, beneath his coat, 
with which he dares not cover it for fear of a crush. Besides 
these, there are lawyers' clerks, with undeniable black bottles 
swathed in brown paper, and pushed up tightly under the 
left armpit, swaggering along as proudly as though bin No. 12 
in their own cellar were crammed with fifty- dozen, and never 
dreaming that every passer-by is cognizant of their three-and- 
sixpenny purchase. Suddenly we find ourselves in a crowd, 
and, going with the stream, are borne into the centre of a 
multitude assembled round the entrance to a stable-yard, over 
which is painted in gigantic letters on a broad white sheet : 
"Welcome to the Christmas Feast ;" and underneath, "God 
loveth a cheerful giver." Within are tents surmounted with 
banners inscribed with texts of Scripture, enforcing the duty 
of benevolence, and inviting the poor to enjoy its fruits. 
Christian charity is doing its work by wholesale. Crowds of 
the poor and ill-fed populace are streaming in, directed by a 
numerous band of policemen, and numbers are coming out 
loaded with the good old English fare of roast beef and plum- 
pudding, to say nothing of tea enough for a week's consumption. 
Trotty Yeck is there with all his tribe ; and every man, woman, 



332 CT7EI0SITIES OF LOXDOIS T LIFE. 

and child is armed with plate, dish, basin, or jug, for the re- 
ception of the welcome dole, which continues from one in the 
afternoon till late in the evening, and readers that particular 
district a marked contrast to all the rest of London on a 
Christmas afternoon. Elsewhere, there is a void and a silence 
in the streets, to which the stillness of the Sabbath is com- 
parative uproar. Hundreds of thousands of revolving spits 
are about to surrender their savoury burdens; the multitu- 
dinous mouth of London waters at the impending feast, whose 
odour fills the air; the gastronomic treasures of the east and 
the west, the north and the south, of proximate Kew and far 
Cathay, are heaped for final sacrifice upon myriads of festive 
boards. All London is now in-doors, and " particularly 
engaged." Here and there an omnibus and a cab rattle along 
the paved road to the unwonted music of their own echoes, 
and for hours they have almost undisputed possession of the 
out-door world. 

After dinner, we are tempted again to the scene of the poor 
man's feast. Introduced by a friend and subscriber we man- 
age to make our way into the principal tent, where, in the 
course of the day, hundreds have dined upon substantial fare, 
of which the odours yet remaining are sufficient evidence. 
The place is one bower of canvas and foliage. Upon a plat- 
form at one end, a merry-faced orator is resounding the praises 
of a certain inestimable personage, amidst the cries of "Hear, 
hear! ,: and the uproarious bravos of the auditors. The 
merry-faced gentleman subsides with a general round of ap- 
plause, and the inestimable personage comes forward to ac- 
knowledge the compliment. Shade of Father Christmas ! it is 
the veritable Soyer himself, the prince of cooks, habited in his 
kitchen garb, his handsome face gleaming with exercise and 
good-humour. See how politely he bows to his humble friends, 
and hear if you can, for we can't, how handsomely he repudi- 
ates all claim to the praise so lavishly bestowed by the former 
speaker. Then a band of music strikes up, and M. Soyer 



CHRISTMAS IX THE METROPOLIS. 333 

rushes into the kitchen, and we, mindful of certain annual 
anthems, in which we are pledged to take a part in the home 
circle, scramble through the motley crowd, and retrace our 
steps homewards. 

The quiet that reigns all the afternoon and evening through- 
out the city is effectually broken before midnight, by which 
time the streets are populous again with groups of well-dressed 
visitors returning to their homes, noisy with mirth or heavy 
with wine ; these reclining in cab or hackney, and those 
loudly chattering on the pavement, and beguiling the walk 
with jest or song. The rumble of wheels and the merry 
march of foot passengers continue for the best part of the 
night, and as they fade away into silence, Old Father Christmas 
vanishes in the morning mist. 

We can hardly close these desultory sketches of Christmas- 
time without some brief allusion to the day after Christmas, 
which, through every nook and cranny of the great Babel, is 
known and recognised as " Boxing Day," — the day consecrated 
to baksheesh, when nobody, it would almost seem, is too proud 
to beg, and when everybody who does not beg is expected to 
play the almoner. " Tie up the knocker — say you're sick, 
you are dead," is the best advice perhaps that could be given 
in such cases to any man who has a street-door and a knocker 
upon it. Now is your time to make out a new list of occu- 
pations, and to become acquainted with all the benefactors 
whose good offices you have been enjoying all the year through 
without one thought of the gratitude you owe them. Dab 
the first is the sweep, of course, who must be paid over again 
for sweeping your chimneys. Half fearing that if you refuse 
you may get a smoky house for the rest of the year, you con- 
sent for the sake of your lungs, and he is off. You sit down 
to breakfast, and with the first slice of toast comes dab the 
second. You glance out of the window, and see a couple of 
long- coated varlets bearing battered French horns, and you 
cheerfully bestow another shilling on the minstrels, as you 



334 CTJBI0S1TIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

suppose of the wet and dismal nights. They are off to the 
next door, and before you have drunk your second cup conies 
dab the third — the turncock wants his water-rate. You do 
as you like with him, hut if you turn him off empty, he does 
•the same with the water, and leaves you dependent on your 
neighbours for a supply. Dab the fourth is the dustman, and 
you must down with your dnst, or yon will get the dust down 
yonr throat the next time the bin has to be cleared out. Dab 
the fifth, waters the roads in summer, and wants to wet his 
whistle at your expense. Dab the sixth scrapes them in win- 
ter, and now comes to scrape acquaintance with you in the 
affectionate desire of drinking your health "at this jiful 
season." Dab the seventh — what ! the waits again ? I gave 
the fellow a shilling just now." " Yes, sir," says Betty, 
" but them fellers had no right to it." Here the leader and 
spokesman of the band of genuine waits makes his appearance, 
bowing and scraping at the parlour-door : "Sorry to hobtra&e, sir, 
but ours is the genuine waits, sir. That there gang what you 
subscribed, sir, only goes a collectin' — they never plays nothin' ; 
they aint musicians, only tllievin , scamps as robs honest men. 
You rek'lect my vice, sir, a wishin' of you a merry Christmas 
and a happy new year." Of course yon recognise his "vice," 
for he bellows as loud as he did last Wednesday at midnight, 
and of course, too, you pay the shilling over again. Dab the 
eighth is the lamp -lighter, who enlightens you on the subject 
of his large merits and small pay. Dab the ninth is the 
grocer's boy, who is followed by a shoal of dabs in regular 
succession, comprising every mentionable trade, until at length 
your patience being exhausted, and your small- change at the 
same low ebb, you rush desperately into a greatcoat and out of 
the house, and leave Betty to fight the battle of baksheesh as 
well as she can, which she generally does victoriously by de- 
clining to show a front to the enemy, and leaving the dabs to 
come as slowly as they choose to the unwilling conviction, 
that "it's no use knocking at the door any more." 



335 



OUR TERRACE. 



London has been often compared to a wilderness — a wilder- 
ness of brick, and so in one sense it is ; because yon may live 
in London all the days of your life if you choose — and, in- 
deed, if you don't choose, if you happen to be very poor — 
without exciting observation, or provoking any further ques- 
tioning than is comprised in a demand for accurate guidance 
from one place to another, a demand which might be made 
upon you in an Arabian desert, if there you chanced to meet 
a stranger. But London is something else besides a wilderness 
— indeed it is everything else. It is a great world, containing 
a thousand little worlds in its bosom ; and pop yourself down 
in it in any quarter you will, you are sure to find your- 
self in the centre of some peculiar microcosm distinguished 
from all others by features more or less characteristic. 

One such little world we have lived in for a round number 
of years ; and as we imagine it presents a picture by no means 
disagreeable to look upon, we will introduce the reader, with 
his permission, into its very limited circle, and chronicle its 
history for one day as faithfully as it is possible for anything 
to do, short of the Daguerreotype and the tax-gatherer. Our 
Terrace, then — for that is our little world — is situated in one 
of the northern, southern, eastern, or western suburbs — we 
have reasons for not being particular — at the distance of two 
miles and three-quarters from the black dome of St. Paul's. 



336 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDON LIFE. 

It consists of thirty genteel-looking second-rate houses, stand- 
ing upon a rentable terrace, at least three feet above the level 
of the carriage-way, and having small gardens enclosed in iron 
palisades in front of them. The garden gates open upon a 
pavement of nine feet in width; the carriage-road is thirty 
feet across ; and on the opposite side is another but lower ter- 
race, snrmoiinted with handsome semi-detached villas, with 
ample flower-gardens both in front and rear, those in the front 
being planted, but rather sparingly, with limes, birches, and a 
few specimens of the white-ash, which in summer-time over- 
shadow the pavement, and shelter a passing pedestrian when 
caught in a shower. At one end of Our Terrace there is a 
respectable butcher's shop, a public -house, and a shop which 
is perpetually changing owners, and making desperate attempts 
to establish itself as something or other, without any particular 
partiality for any particular line of business. It has been by 
turns a print shop, a stationer's, a circulating library, a toy- 
shop, a Berlin- wool shop, a music and musical-instrument 
shop, a haberdasher's shop, a snuff and cigar shop, and one 
other thing which has escaped our memory — and all within 
the last seven years. Each retiring speculator has left his 
stock-in-trade, along with the good-will, to his successor; and 
at the present moment it is a combination of shops, where 
everything you don't want is to be found in a state of dilapi- 
dation, together with a very hungry-looking proprietor, who, 
for want of customers upon whom to exercise his ingenuity, 
pulls away all day long upon the accordion to the tune of 
" We're a' Xoddin'." The other end of Our Terrace has its 
butcher, its public -house, its grocer, and a small furniture- 
shop, doing a small trade, under the charge of a very small 
boy. Let thus much suffice for the physiology of our subject. 
We proceed to record its history, as it may be read by any one 
of the inhabitants who chooses to spend the waking hours of 
a single day in perusing it from his parlour window. 

It is a fine morning in the middle of June, and the clock of 



0TJE TEEEACE. 337 

the church at the end of the road is about striking seven, when 
the parlour shutters and the street doors of the terrace begin 
to open one by one. By a quarter past, the servant girls, 
having lighted their fires, and put the kettle on to boil for 
breakfast, are ostensibly busy in sweeping the pathways of the 
small front-gardens, but are actually enjoying a simultaneous 
gossip together over the garden railings — a fleeting pleasure, 
which must be nipped in the bud, because master goes to 
town at half-past eight, and his boots are not yet cleaned, or 
his breakfast prepared. Now the bed-room bell rings, which 
means hot water ; and this is no sooner up, than mistress is 
down, and breakfast is laid in the parlour. At a quarter 
before eight, the eggs are boiled, and the bacon toasted, and 
the first serious business of the day is in course of transaction. 
Mr. Jones of No. 9, Mr. Eobinson of No. 10, and Mr. Brown 
of No. 11, are bound to be at their several posts in the city at 
nine o'clock ; and having swallowed a hasty breakfast, they 
may be seen, before half-past eight has chimed, walking up 
and down the terrace chatting together, and wondering whe- 
ther " that Smith," as usual, means to keep the omnibus 
waiting this morning,, or whether he will come forth in time. 
Precisely as the half hour strikes, the tin horn of the omnibus 
sounds its shrill blast, and the vehicle is seen rattling round 
the corner, stopping one moment at No. 28, to take up Mr. 
Johnson. On it comes, with a fresh blast, to where the com- 
mercial trio are waiting for it ; out rushes Smith, wiping his 
mouth, and the " bus," swallowing up the whole four, rum- 
bles and trumpets on to take up Thompson, Jackson, and Ri- 
chardson, who, cigars in mouth, are waiting at a distance of 
forty paces off to ascend the roof. An hour later, a second 
omnibus comes by on the same benevolent errand, for the ac- 
commodation of those gentlemen, more favoured by fortune, 
who are not expected to be at the post of business until the 
hour of ten. As Our Terrace does not stand in a direct omnibus 
route, these are all the " buses" that will pass in the course 

a 



338 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

of the day. The gentlemen whom they convey every morning 
to town are regular customers, and the vehicles diverge from 
their regular course in order to pick them up at their own 
doors. 

About half-past nine, or from that to a quarter to ten, comes 
the postman with his first delivery of letters for the day. Our 
Terrace is the most toilsome part of his beat, for having to 
serve both sides of the way, his progress is very like that of 
a ship at sea sailing against the wind. R'tat he goes on our 
side, then down he jumps into the road — B'bang on the other 
side — tacks about again, and serves the terrace — off again, 
and serves the villas, and so on till he has fairly epistolised 
both sides of the way, and vanished round the corner. The 
vision of his gold band and red collar is anxiously looked for 
in the morning by many a fair face, which a watchful observer 
may see furtively peering through the drawing-room window- 
curtains. After he has departed, and the well-to -do merchants 
and employers who reside in the villas opposite have had time 
to look over their correspondence, come sundry neat turn-outs 
from the stables and coach-houses in the rear of the villas ; a 
light, high gig, drawn by a frisky grey, into which leaps 
young Oversea the shipbroker — a comfortable, cushioned four- 
wheel drawn by a pair of bay ponies, into which old Discount 
climbs heavily, followed perhaps by his two daughters, bound 
on a shopping- visit to the city — and a spicy-looking, rattling 
trap, with a pawing horse, which has a decided objection to 
standing still, for Mr. Goadall, the wealthy cattle- drover. 
These, with other vehicles of less note, all roll off the ground 
by a quarter after ten o'clock or so ; and the ladies and their 
servants, with some few exceptions, are left in undisputed 
possession of home, while not a footfall of man or beast is 
heard in the sunshiny quiet of the street. 

The quiet, however, is broken before long by a peculiar and 
suggestive cry. "We do not hear it yet ourselves, but Stalker, 
our black cat and familiar, has caught the well-known accents, 



0T7B, TERRACE. 339 

and with a characteristic crooning noise, and a stiff perpen- 
dicular erection of tail, he sidles towards the door, demanding 
as plainly as possible, to be let out. Yes, it is the cats-meat 
man. " Ca' me-e-et — me-yet — me-e-yet!" rills the morning 
air, and arouses exactly thirty responsive feline voices — for 
there is a cat to every house — and points thirty aspiring tails 
to the zenith. As many hungry tabbies, sables, and tortoise- 
shells as can get out of doors, are trooping together with 
arched backs upon the pavement, following the little pony- 
cart, the cats' commissariat equipage, and each one, anxious 
for his daily allowance, contributing most mewsically his quota 
to the general concert. "We do not know how it is, but the 
cats-meat man is the most unerring and punctual of all those 
peripatetic functionaries who undertake to cater for the con- 
sumption of the public. The baker, the butcher, the grocer, 
the butterman, the fishmonger, and the coster, occasionally 
forget your necessities, or omit to call for your orders — the 
cats-meat man never. Other traders, too, dispense their stock 
by a sliding- scale, and are sometimes out of stock altogether : 
Pussy's provider, on the contrary, sticks to one price from 
year's end to year's end, and never, in the memory of the 
oldest Grimalkin, was known to disappoint a customer. A 
half-penny for a cat's breakfast has been the regulation-price 
ever since the horses of the metropolis began to submit to the 
boiling process for the benefit of the feline race. 

By the time the cats have retired to growl over their allow- 
ance in private, the daily succession of nomadic industrials 
begin to lift up their voices, and to defile slowly along Our 
Terrace, stopping now and then to execute a job or effect a 
sale when an opportunity presents itself. Our limits will not 
allow us to notice them all, but we must devote a few 
paragraphs to those without whom our picture would be 
incomplete. 

First comes an ingenious lass of two or three-and-twenty, 
with a flaming red shawl, pink ribbons in her bonnet, and the 

q2 



340 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

hue of health on a rather saucy face. She carries a large 
basket on her left arm, and in her right hand she displays to 
general admiration a gorgeous group of flowers, fashioned 
twice the size of life, from tissue-paper of various colours. 
She lifts up her voice occasionally as she marches slowly along, 
singing, in a clear accent: " Flowers — ornamental papers for 
the stove — flowers! paper-flowers!" She is the accredited 
herald of summer — a phenomenon, of late years, of very tardy 
appearance. TY~e should have seen her six weeks ago, if the 
summer had not declined to appear at the usual season. She 
is the gaudy, party-coloured ephemera of street commerce, and 
will disappear from view in a fortnight's time, to be seen no 
more until the opening of next summer. Her wares, which 
are manufactured with much taste, and with an eye to the 
harmony of colours, are in much request among the genteel 
housewives of the suburbs. They are exceedingly cheap, con- 
sidering the skill which must be applied in their construction. 
They are all the work of her own hands, and have occupied 
her time and swallowed up her capital for some months past. 
She enjoys almost a monopoly in her art, and is not to be 
beaten down in the price of her goods. She knows their 
value, and is more independent than an artist dares to be in 
the presence of a patron. Her productions are a pleasant 
summer substitute for the cheerful fire of winter; and it is 
perhaps well for her that, before the close of autumn, the 
faded hues of the flowers, and the harbour they afford to dust, 
will convert them into waste paper, in spite of all the care 
that may be taken to preserve them. 

Paper Poll, as the servants call her, is hardly out of sight, 
and not out of hearing, when a young fellow and his wife 
come clattering along the pavement, appealing to all who may 
require their good offices in the matter of chair-mending. 
The man is built up in a sort of cage-work of chairs stuck 
about his head and shoulders, and his dirty phiz is only half 
visible through a kind of grill of legs and cross-bars. These 



0T7E TERE1CE. 341 

are partly commissions which, having executed at home, he is 
carrying to their several owners. But as everybody does not 
choose to trust him away with property, he is ready to execute 
orders on the spot ; and to this end his wife accompanies him 
on his rounds. She is loaded with a small bag of tools sus- 
pended at her waist, and a plentiful stock of split-cane under 
one arm. He will weave a new cane-seat to an old chair for 
9d., and he will set down his load and do it before your eyes 
in your own garden, if you prefer that to entrusting him with 
it ; that is, he will make the bargain, and his wife will weave 
the seat under his supervision, unless there happen to be two 
to be repaired, when husband and wife will work together. 
"We have noticed that it is a very silent operation, that of 
weaving chair-bottoms ; and that though the couple may be 
seated for an hour and more together, rapidly plying the 
flexible canes, they never exchange a word with each other 
till the task is accomplished. Sometimes the wife is left at a 
customer's door working alone, while the husband wanders 
further on in search of other employment, returning by the 
time she has finished her task. But there are no chairs to 
mend this morning on Our Terrace, and our bamboo friends 
may jog on their way. 

Now resounds from a distance the cry of "All a-growin' an* 
a-blowin' — all a-blowin', a-blowin' here!" and in a few 
minutes the travelling florist makes his appearance, driving 
before him a broad-surfaced hand -cart, loaded in profusion 
with exquisite flowers of all hues, in full bloom, and, to all 
appearance, thriving famously. It may happen, however, as 
it has happened to us, that the blossoms now so vigorous and 
blooming, may all drop oif on the second or third day ; and 
the naked plant, after making a sprawling and almost success- 
ful attempt to reach the ceiling for a week or so, shall become 
suddenly sapless and withered, the emblem of a broken-down 
and emaciated sot — and, what is more, ruined from the self- 
same cause, an overdose of stimulating fluid. It may happen, 



342 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

on the other hand, that the plant shall have suffered no trick 
of the gardener's trade, and shall bloom fairly to the end of 
its natural term. The commerce in blossoming flowers is one 
of the most uncertain, and dangerous speculations in which 
the small street-traders of London can engage. When carried 
on under favourable circumstances, it is one of the most profit- 
able, the demand for flowers being constant and increasing ; 
but the whole stock-in-trade of a small perambulating capital- 
ist may be ruined by a shower of rain, which will spoil their 
appearance for the market, and prevent his selling them before 
they are overblown. Further, as few of these dealers have 
any means of housing this kind of stock safely during the 
night, they are often compelled to part with them, after an 
unfavourable day, at less than prime cost, to prevent a total 
loss. Still, there are never wanting men of a speculative 
turn of mind, and the cry of " All a-blowin' an' a-growin' : 
resounds through the streets as long as the season supplies 
flowers to grow and to blow. 

The flower- merchant wheels off, having left a good sprink- 
ling of geraniums in our neighbours' windows; and his cousin- 
gernian, " the graveller," comes crawling after him, with his 
cart and stout horse in the middle of the road, while he walks 
on one side of the pavement, and his assistant on the other. 
This fellow is rather a singular character, and one that is to 
be met with probably nowhere upon the face of the earth but 
in the suburbs of London. He is, par excellence, the exponent 
of a feeling which pervades the popular mind in the metro- 
polis on the subject of the duty which respectable people owe 
to respectability. It is impossible for a housekeeper in a 
neighbourhood having any claims to gentility, to escape the 
recognition of this feeling in the lower class of industrials. 
If you have a broken window in the front of your house, the 
travelling glazier thinks, to use his own expression, that you 
have a right to have it repaired, and therefore that he, having 
discovered the fracture, has a right to the job of mending it. 



OUR TERRACE. 343 

If your bell-handle is out of order or broken off, the travelling 
bellman thinks he has a right to repair it, and bores you, in 
fact, until you commission him to do so — and so on. In the 
same manner, and on the same principle, so soon as the fine 
weather sets in, and the front- gardens begin to look gay, the 
graveller loads his cart with gravel, and shouldering his spade, 
crawls leisurely through the suburbs with his companion, 
peering into every garden; and wherever he sees that the 
walks are grown dingy or moss-grown, he knocks boldly at the 
door, and demands to be set to work in mending your ways. 
The best thing you can do is to make the bargain and employ 
him at once ; if not, he will be round again to-morrow, and 
to-morrow, and to-morrow, and bore you into consenting at 
last. You live in a respectable house, and you have a right to 
keep your garden in a respectable condition — and the graveller 
is determined that you shall do so : has he not brought gravel 
to the door on purpose ? it will cost you but a shilling or two. 
Thus he lays down the law in his own mind ; and sooner or 
later, as sure as fate, he lays down the gravel in your garden. 
While the graveller is patting down the pathway round 
Robinson's flower-bed, we hear the well-known cry of a 
countryman whom we have known any time these ten years, 
and who, with his wife by his side, has perambulated the 
suburbs for the best part of his life. He has taken upon him- 
self the patronage of the laundry department, and he shoulders 
a fagot of clothes-poles, ten feet long, with forked extremities, 
all freshly cut from the forest. Coils of new rope for drying 
are hanging upon his arm, and his wife carries a basket well 
stocked with clothes-pins of a superior description, manufac- 
tured by themselves. The cry of " Clo' -pole-line- pins" is one 
long familiar to the neighbourhood ; and as this honest couple 
have earned a good reputation by a long course of civility and 
probity, they enjoy the advantage of a pretty extensive con- 
nection. Their perambulations are confined to the suburbs, 
and it is a question if they ever enter London proper from 



344 ctjeiosities or lo^do^ life. 

one year's end to another. It is of no nse to carry clothes- 
poles and drying-lines where there are no conveniences for 
Trashing and drying. 

Next comes a travelling umbrella-mender, fagoted on the 
back like the man in the moon of the nursery rhyme -book. 
He is followed at a short distance by a travelling tinker, 
swinging his live- coals in a sort of tin censer, and giving 
utterance to a hoarse and horrible cry, intelligible only to the 
cook who has a leaky saucepan. Then comes the chamois- 
leather woman, brindled about with damaged skins, in request 
for the polishing of plate and plated wares. She is one of 
that persevering class who will hardly take "No* for an an- 
swer. It takes her a full hour to get through the terrace, for 
she enters every garden, and knocks at every door from No. 1 
to No. 30. In the winter- time she pursues an analogous 
trade, dealing in what may strictly be termed the raw mate- 
rial, inasmuch as she then buys and cries hare- skins and 
rabbit-skins. She has, unfortunately, a notoriously bad cha- 
racter, and is accused of being addicted to the practice of 
taking tenpence and a hare-skin in exchange for a counterfeit 
shilling. 

By this time it is twelve o'clock and past, and Charley 
Coster, who serves the terrace with vegetables, drives up his 
stout cob to the door, and is at the very moment we write 
bargaining with Betty for new potatoes at threepence-half- 
penny a pound. Betty declares it is a scandalous price for 
potatoes. "Yes, dear," says Charley, "an' another scan'lous 
thing is, that I cam't sell 'em for no less." Charley is the 
most affectionate of costers, and is a general favourite with 
the Abigails of the terrace. His turn-out is the very model 
of a travelling green-grocer's shop, well stocked with all the 
fruits and vegetables of the season ; and he himself is a model 
of a coster, clean shaved, clean shod, and trimly dressed, with 
a flower in his button -hole, an everlasting smile upon his face, 
and the nattiest of neck-ties. The cunning rogue pretends 



OUR TEEEACE. 345 

to be smitten with Betty, and most likely does the same with 
all the other Bettys of the neighbourhood, to all of whom he 
chatters incessantly of everything and everybody — save and 
except of the wife and three children waiting for him at 
home. He will leave a good portion of his stock behind him 
when he quits the terrace. 

After Charley has disappeared, there is a pause for an hour 
or two in the flow of professionals past Our Terrace. The 
few pedestrians that pass along are chiefly gentlefolks, who 
have come abroad this fine morning for an ailing — to take a 
constitutional, and to pick up an appetite for dinner. You 
may chance to hear the cry of " Oranges and nuts," or of 
"Cod — live cod," and you may be entertained by a band of 
musicians in a gaily- coloured van patrolling for the purpose of 
advertising the merits of something or other which is to be 
had for nothing at all, or the next thing to it, if you can pre- 
vail upon yourself to go and fetch it. Perhaps Punch and 
Judy will pitch their little citadel in front of your dwelling ; 
or, more likely still, a band of mock Ethiopians, with fiddle, 
castanets, and banjo, may tempt your liberality with a per- 
formance of Uncle Ned or Old Dan Tucker ; or a corps of 
German musicians may trumpet you into a fit of martial 
ardour ; or a wandering professor of the German flute soothe 
you into a state of romance. 

As the afternoon wears on the tranquillity grows more pro- 
found. The villas opposite stand asleep in the sunshine ; the 
sound of a single footstep is heard on the pavement ; and 
anon you hear the feeble, cracked voice of old Willie, the 
water- cress man, distinctly articulating the cry of " Water- 
cresses ; fine brown water-cresses ; royal Albert water-cresses ; 
the best in London — everybody say so." The water-cresses 
are welcomed on the terrace as an ornament, and something 
more, to the tea-table ; and while tea is getting ready for the 
inhabitants of the terrace, the dwellers in the opposite villas 
are seen returning to dinner. The lame match-man now hob- 

Q 3 



846 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

bles along upon his crutches, with his little basket of lucifers 
suspended at his side. He is thoroughly deaf and three parts 
dumb, uttering nothing beyond an incomprehensible kind of 
croak by way of a demand for custom. He is a privileged 
being, whom nobody thinks of interfering with. He has the 
entree of all the gardens on both sides of the way, and is the 
acknowledged depositary of scraps and remnants of all kinds 
which have made their last appearance upon the dinner or 
supper table. 

About five o'clock, the tinkling note of the muffin-bell 
strikes agreeably upon the ear, suggestive of fragrant souchong 
and bottom-crusts hot, crackling, and unctuous. Now ensues 
a delicate savour in the atmosphere of the terrace kitchens, 
and it is just at its height when Smith, Brown, Jones, and 
Robinson are seen walking briskly up the terrace. They all 
go in at Smith's, where the muffin -man went in about half an 
hour before, and left half his stock behind him. By six o'clock 
the lords and ladies of Our Terrace are congregated round 
their tea-urns ; and by seven, you may see from one of the 
back-windows a tolerable number of the lords, arrayed in 
dressing-gowns and slippers, and some of them with corpulent 
meerschaums dangling from their mouths, strolling leisurely 
in the gardens in the rear of their dwellings, and amusing 
themselves with their children, whose prattling voices and 
innocent laughter mingle with the twittering of those suburban 
songsters, the sparrows, and with the rustling of the foliage, 
stirred by the evening breeze. These pleasant sounds die 
away by degrees. Little boys and girls go to bed; the gloom 
of twilight settles down upon the gardens ; candles are lighted 
in the drawing-rooms, and from a dozen houses at once piano- 
fortes commence their harmony. At No. 12, the drawing- 
room windows are open, though the blinds are down ; and 
the slow-pacing policeman pauses in his round, and leans 
against the iron railings, being suddenly brought up by the 
richly-harmonious strains of a glee for three voices : Brown, 



OUR TERRACE. 347 

Jones, and Robinson are doing the Chough and Crow ; and 
Smith, who prides himself on his semi-grand, which he 
tunes with his own hands once a week, is doing the accompa- 
niment in his best style. The merry chorus swells delight- 
fully upon the ear, and is heard half-way down the terrace ; 
the few foot-passengers who are passing stop under the win- 
dow to listen, till one of them is imprudent enough to cry 
" Encore/ ' when down go the windows, and the harmonious 
sounds are shut in from vulgar ears. 

It is by this time nearly half-past nine o'clock, and now 
comes the regular nightly " tramp, tramp " of the police, 
marching in Indian file, and heavily clad in their night-gear. 
They come to replace the guardians of the day by those of 
the night. One of the number falls out of the line on the 
terrace, where he commences his nocturnal wanderings, and 
guarantees the peace and safety of the inhabitants for the suc- 
ceeding eight hours ; the rest tramp onwards to their distant 
stations. The echoes of their iron heels have hardly died 
away, when there is a sudden and almost simultaneous erup- 
tion from every garden-gate on the terrace of clean-faced, 
neat-aproned, red-elbowed servant- girls, each and all armed 
with a jug or a brace of jugs, with a sprinkling of black bot- 
tles among them, and all bound to one or other of the public- 
houses which guard the terrace at either end. It is the hour 
of supper ; and the supper-beer, and the after-supper night- 
caps, for those who indulge in them, have to be procured from 
the publican. This is an occasion upon which Betty scorns 
to hurry ; but she takes time by the forelock, starting for the 
beer as soon as the cloth is laid, and before master has finished 
his pipe, or his game of chess, or Miss Clementina her song, 
in order that she may have leisure for a little gossip with No. 
7 on the one hand, or No. 9 on the other. She goes out 
without beat of drum, and lets herself in with the street- 
door key without noise, bringing home, besides the desiderated 
beverage, the news of the day, and the projects of next door 



348 CTTRIOSXTIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

for the morrow, with, it may be, a plan for the enjoyment of 
her next monthly holiday. 

Supper is the last great business of the day upon Our Ter- 
race, which, by eleven at night, is lapped in profound repose. 
The moon rides high in mid-sky, and the black shadows of 
the trees lie motionless on the white pavement. ISTot a foot- 
fall is heard abroad ; the only sound that is audible as you 
put your head out of the window, to look up at the glimmer- 
ing stars and radiant moon, is the distant and monotonous 
murmur of the great metropolis, varied now and then by the 
shrill scream of a far-off railway- whistle, or the " cough, 
cough, cough" of the engine of some late train. We are 
sober folks on the terrace, and are generally all snug abed 
before twelve o'clock. The last sound that reaches our ears 
ere we doze off into forgetfulness is the slow, lumbering, 
earthquaky advance of a huge outward-bound waggon. "We 
hear it at the distance of half a mile, and note distinctly the 
crushing and pulverizing of every small stone which the 
broad wheels roll over as they sluggishly proceed on their 
way. It rocks us in our beds as it passes the house ; and for 
twenty minutes afterwards, if we are awake so long, we are 
aware that it is groaning heavily onwards, and shaking the 
solid earth in its progress — till it sinks away in silence, or 
we into the land of dreams. 



349 



THE CHABITABLE CHUMS' BENEFIT CLUB. 



The " Mother Bunc]l ,, public -house stands modestly aside 
from the din, traffic, and turmoil of a leading London 
thoroughfare, and retires, like a bashful maiden, from the 
gaze of a crowd to the society of its own select circle. It 
is situated in a short and rather narrow street, leading from 
an omnibus route running north from the city to nowhere 
in particular — or, if particulars must be giyen, to that com- 
plicated assemblage of carts, cabs, and clothes-lines; of 
manure heaps and disorganised pumps, and deceased pots 
of beer; of caged thrushes, blackbirds, and magpies; of 
dead dogs and cats, and colonies of thriving rats; of im- 
prisoned terriers and goats let out on parole; of shrill and 
angry maternity and mud-loving infancy; and of hissing, 
curry- combing grooms and haltered horses, to which Lon- 
doners have given the designation of a Mews. Mr. Peter 
Bowley, the landlord of the " Mother Bunch,' ' was the late 
butler of the late Sir Plumberry Muggs; and having suc- 
ceeded, on the demise of the baronet, to a legacy of £500, 
and finding himself unable any longer to resist the charms 
of his seven years' comforter and counsellor, the cook, supple- 
mented as they were by the attractions of a legacy of the 
like amount, he had united his destiny and wealth with hers 
in one common cause. The name of Sir Plumberry Muggs, 
even though its worthy proprietor was defunct, was still of 



350 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

sufficient infTuence to procure a licence for his butler ; and 
within a few months of his departure, Mr. Bowley had 
opened the new Inn and Tavern for the accommodation of Her 
Majesty's thirsty lieges. He had congratulated himself upon 
the selection of the site, and upon the suitableness of the 
premises to the requirements of a good trade ; and his heart 
swelled within him, as he sat at the head of his own table, 
on the occasion of the house-warming, dispensing with no 
niggard hand the gratuitous viands and unlimited beer, which 
were at once to symbolise and inaugurate the hospitality of 
his mansion. He had a snug bar curtained with crimson 
drapery, for the convenience of those who, declining the 
ostentation of the public room, might prefer to imbibe their 
morning- draught with becoming privacy. He had a roomy 
tap -room, where a cheerful fire was to blaze the winter 
through, and a civil Ganymede minister to the wants of the 
humblest guest. There was a handsome parlour hung round 
with sporting-prints, and furnished with cushioned seats and 
polished mahogany tables, where the tradesmen of the neigh- 
bourhood might take their evening solace after the fatigues 
of business; and, more than all this, he had an immense 
saloon on the first-floor above, calculated for social convivi- 
ality on the largest scale, and furnished with mirrors, pictures, 
and an old grand- piano, a portion of the lares of the deceased 
Sir Plumb erry Muggs. 

Mr. Eowley, however, soon made the unpleasing discovery, 
that it is one thing to open an establishment of the kind — 
which had already swallowed up two-thirds of his capital — 
and another thing to induce the public to patronise it. Not- 
withstanding the overflow which had gathered at his house- 
warming, and the numberless good wishes which had been 
expressed, and toasts which had been drunk to his prosperity, 
yet the prosperity did not come. Of the hundred and fifty 
enthusiastic well-wishers who had done honour to his enter- 
tainment, squeezed his hand, and sworn he was a trump, not 



THE CHAKITABLE CHUMS* BENEFIT CLUB. 351 

a dozen ever entered the house a second time. Do what he 
would, Bowley could not create a business ; and the corners 
of his mouth began visibly to decline ere the experiment had 
lasted a couple of months. He made a desperate effort to 
get up a Free-and-easy; he had the old piano tuned, and set 
an old fellow to play upon it with open windows ; exhibited 
a perpetual announcement of "A Concert this Evening;" 
and himself led off the harmony, to the tune of Tally -ho, at 
the top of his voice. It was all of no avail. The half-dozen 
grooms who joined in feeble chorus did not pay the expense 
of the gas; and he found the Free- and- easy, without abettors, 
the most difficult thing in the world. So he gave it up, and 
fell into a brown study, which engrossed him for a month. 
He had visions of Whitecross Street before his eyes; and 
poor Mrs. Bowley sighed again, and sighed in vain, after the 
remembrance of Sir Plumberry's kitchen, and its vanished 
joys. The only symptom of business was the gathering of 
half-a-dozen nightly customers, who sipped their grog for 
an hour or two in the parlour; and one of these, moreover, 
had never paid a farthing since he had patronised the house. 
There were twenty grogs scored up against him, besides a 
double column of beers. Mr. Bowley will put an end to 
that at any rate; so he signals the bibulous debtor, and 
having got him within the folds of the crimson curtains, 
he politely informs him, that credit is no part of his system 
of doing business, and requests payment. Mr. Nogoe, the 
convivial defaulter, who is a gentleman of fifty, who has seen 
the world, and knows how to manage it, is decidedly of 
Bowley' s opinion — that, as a general rule, credit is a bad 
plan ; inasmuch as, so far as his experience goes in the public 
line, to afford it to your customers is the first step towards 
losing it yourself. But he feels himself free to confess, that 
he is at the present moment under a cloud, and that it would 
be inconvenient to him to liquidate his score just then, 
though, of course, if Bowley insists, &c. While Bowley is 



352 cmtiosiTiES or loxdon life. 

pausing to consider which Trill be the best way to insist, 
Mr. Xogoe carelessly leads the conversation to another topic, 
and begins to descant upon the marvellous capabilities of 
the " Mother Bunch" for doing a first-rate trade; and hints 
mysteriously at the splendid thing that might be made of it, 
only supposing that his friend Bowley knew his own interest, 
and went the right way to work. The landlord, who is now 
all ear, and who knows his own interest well enough, pours 
out to his guest a glass of his favourite " cold without/' and 
seating himself opposite him at the little table, encourages 
him to be more explicit. A long private and confidential 
conversation ensues, the results of which are destined to 
change the aspect of affairs at the " Mother Bunch." Ve 
shall recount the process for the information of our readers. 

Xext morning, Mr. Bowley is altogether a new man ; brisk, 
cheerful, and active, he has a smile for everybody, and a 
joke and a "good morning" even for the cobbler, who has the 
cure of soles in that very questionable benefice, the Mews. 
He visits his tap-room guests, and informs them of a plan 
which is in operation to improve the condition of the labouring- 
classes, of wbich they will hear more by and by. He is pro- 
foundly impressed with the sublime virtues of charity, bene- 
volence, brotherly love, and, as he terms it, " all that sort of 
thing." Day after day, he is seen in close confab with Mr. 
jS"ogoe, who is now as busy as a bee, buzzing about here, 
there, and everywhere, with rolls of paper in his hand, a pen 
behind his ear, and another in his mouth, and who is never 
absent an hour together from the "Mother Bunch," where 
he has a private room much frequented by active, middle- 
aged persons, of rather a seedy cast, and where he takes all 
his meals at the landlord's table. The first-fruits of these 
mysterious operations at length appear in the form of a pro- 
spectus of a new mutual-assurance society, under the designa- 
tion of "The Charitable Chums' Benefit Club;" of which 
Mr. Xogoe, who has undertaken its organisation, is to act as 



THE CHARITABLE CHUMS* BENEFIT CLUB. 353 

secretary and chairman at the preliminary meetings, and to 
lend his valuable assistance in getting the society into 
working order. Under his direction, tens of thousands of the 
prospectuses are printed, and industriously circulated among 
the artisans, labourers, small tradesmen, and serving-men in 
all parts of the town, both far and near. Promises of unheard- 
of advantages, couched in language of most affectionate sym- 
pathy, are addressed to all whom it may concern. The same 
are repeated again and again in the daily and weekly papers. 
A public meeting is called, and the names of intending mem- 
bers are enrolled ; special meetings follow, held at the large 
room of the "Mother Bunch ;" the enrolled members are 
summoned ; officers and functionaries are balloted for and 
appointed ; rules and regulations are drawn up, considered, 
adopted, certified, and printed. Mr. IS'ogoe is confirmed in 
his double function as secretary and treasurer. Subscrip- 
tions now in; and, to Bowley's infinite gratification, beer and 
spirits begin to flow out. The Charitable Chums, though 
eminently provident, are as bibulous as they are benevolent ; 
for every sixpence they invest for the contingencies of the 
future tense, they imbibe at least half-a-crown for the exi- 
gencies of the present. The society soon rises into a condi- 
tion of astonishing prosperity. The terms being liberal 
beyond all precedent, the Charitable Chums becomes wonder- 
fully popular. A guinea a week during sickness, besides 
medical attendance, and ten pounds at death, or half as much 
at the death of a wife, are assured for half the amount of 
subscription payable at the old clubs. The thing is as cheap 
as dirt. The clerk has as much as he can do to enregister the 
names of new applicants, and keep accounts of the entrance- 
money. By way of keeping the society before the public, 
special meetings are held twice a month, to report progress, 
and parade the state of the funds. Before the new society is 
a year old, they have nearly one thousand pounds in hand ; 
and Bowley's house, now known far and wide as the centre 



354 ctjuiosities or London life. 

and focus of the Charitable Chums, swarms with that provi- 
dent brotherhood, who meet by hundreds under the auspices 
of " Mother Bunch," to cultivate sympathy and brotherly 
love, and to irrigate those delicate plants with libations of 
Bowley's gin and Bowley's beer. The Free-and-easy is now 
every night choke-full of wide-mouthed harmonists. The 
" Concert this Evening" is no longer a mere mythic pretence, 
but a very substantial and vociferous fact. The old grand- 
piano, and the old, ragged player, have been cashiered, and 
sent about their business ; and a bran-new Broadwood, pre- 
sided over by a rattling performer, occupies their place. 
Bowley's blooming wife, attended by a brace of alcholic 
naiads, blossoms beneath the crimson drapery of the bar, and 
dispenses "nods and becks," and "wreathed smiles," and 
"noggins of max," and "three -outers," to the votaries of 
benevolence and " Mother Bunch ; " and the landlord is happy, 
and in his element, because the world goes well with him. 

When "Whitsuntide is drawing near, a general meeting of 
the club is convened, for the purpose of considering the sub- 
ject of properties. A grand demonstration, with a procession 
of the members, is resolved upon : it is to come off upon 
Whit-Monday. In spite of the remonstrance of a mean- 
spirited Mr. Nobody — who proposes that, by way of dis- 
tinguishing themselves from the rest of the thousand- and- one 
clubs who will promenade upon that occasion, with music, 
flags, banners, brass-bands, big drums, sashes, aprons, and 
white wands, they, the Charitable Chums, shall walk in pro- 
cession in plain clothes, and save their money till it is wanted 
— and in spite of five or six sneaking, stingy individuals, so 
beggarly minded as to second his proposition, and who were 
summarily coughed down as not fit to be heard, the properties 
were voted; and the majority, highly gratified at having 
their own way, gave carte-llanche to their officers to do what 
they thought right, and for the credit of the society. Ac- 
cordingly, flags and banners of portentous size, together with 



THE CHAEITABLE CHTJMs' BENEFIT CLUB. 355 

sashes, scarfs, and satin aprons, all inlaid with the crest of 
the Charitable Chums — an open hand, with a purse of money 
in it — were manufactured at the order of the secretary, and 
consigned in magnificent profusion to the care of Mr. Bowley, 
to be in readiness for the grand demonstration. A monster 
banner, bearing the designation of the society in white letters 
upon a ground of flame-coloured silk, hung on the morning of 
the day from the parapet of Bowley' s house, and obscured the 
good " Mother Bunch,' ' as she swung upon her hinges, in its 
fluttering folds. The procession, which went off in irre- 
proachable style, was followed by a dinner at Highbury Barn, 
at which above a thousand members sat down to table ; and 
after which, thanks were voted to the different officers of the 
club ; and, in addition thereto, a gold snuff-box, with an ap- 
propriate inscription, was presented to Mr. Nogoe, for his 
unparalleled exertions in the sacred cause of humanity, as 
represented by their society. 

The jovial "Whitsuntide soon passed away, and so did the 
summer, and the autumn was not long in following ; and then 
came the cold winds, and fogs, and hoar frost of November. 
The autumn had been sickly with fevers, and Dr. Dosem, the 
club's medical man, had more cases of typhus to deal with 
than he found at all pleasant or profitable, considering the 
terms upon which he had undertaken the physicking of the 
Charitable Chums. He was heard to say, that it took a deal 
of drugs to get the fever out of them ; and that, though he 
worked harder than any horse, he yet lost more of his 
patients than he had fair reason to expect. "With nearly 
fifteen thousand members, the deaths in the club became 
alarmingly frequent. Nogoe, as he took snuff out of his gold 
box, shrugged his shoulders at the rapid disappearance of the 
funds, as one ten-pound cheque after another was handed over 
to the disconsolate widows. His uneasiness was not at all 
alleviated by the reception of a bill of two hundred and fifty 



356 CURIOSITIES OP LONDON LIFE. 

pounds for properties, &c. among which stood his snuff-box, 
set down at thirty-five gunieas, upon which he knew, for he 
had tried, that no pawnbroker would lend ten pounds. He 
called a special council, of all the officers of the club, and laid 
the state of affairs before them. The first thing they did was 
to pass a vote for the immediate payment of the property bills ; 
a measure which is hardly to be wondered at, if we take into 
account that they were themselves the creditors. The trea- 
surer handed them a cheque for the amount ; and then, ap- 
prising them that there was now, with claims daily increasing, 
less than two hundred pounds in hand, which must of neces- 
sity be soon exhausted, demanded their advice. They advised 
a re-issue of prospectuses and advertisements; which being 
carried into effect at the cost of a hundred pounds, brought a 
shoal of fresh applicants, with their entrance-money, and for 
the moment relieved the pressure upon the exchequer. 

But when the ^November fogs brought the influenza, and a 
hundred of the members were thrown upon their backs and 
the fund at once ; when it became necessary to engage addi- 
tional medical assistance ; and when, in spite of unremitting 
energy in the departments of prospectusing, puffing, and 
personal canvassing, the money leaked out five times as fast 
as it came in, then Mr. Nogoe began to find his position pecu- 
liarly unpleasant, and anything but a bed of roses. With 
" fourscore odd " of sick members yet upon the books — with 
five deaths and three half- deaths unpaid — and the epidemic 
yet in full force, he beheld an unwholesome December threat- 
ening a continuation of sickness and mortality, and a balance 
at the banker's hardly sufficient to pay his own quarter's salary. 
Again he calls his colleagues together, and states the deplorable 
condition of affairs. The representatives of the five deceased 
members, whom K"ogoe has put off. from time to time on va- 
rious ingenious pretences, having become aware of the meet- 
ing, burst in upon their deliberations, and after an exchange 



THE CHAEITABLE CHUMS* BENEFIT CLUB. 357 

of no very complimentary remonstrances, backed by vehement 
demands for immediate payment, are with difficulty induced 
to withdraw, while the committee enter upon the considera- 
tion of their cases. Nogoe produces his budget, from the 
examination of which it appears, that if they are paid in full, 
there will remain in the hands of the bankers, to meet the 
demands of the " fourscore odd" sick members, the sum of 
4s. 7d. "What is to be done ? is now the question. A speechi- 
fication of three hours, during which every member of the 
committee is heard in his turn, helps them to no other expe- 
dient than that of a subscription for the widows, and a re- 
newed agitation, by means of the press and the bill-sticker, 
to re-establish the funds by the collection of fresh fees and 
entrance-money. The subscription, the charge of which is 
confided to a deputy, authorised to collect voluntary donations 
from the various lodges about town, turns out a failure : the 
widows, who want their ten pounds each, disgusted at the 
offer of a few shillings, flock in a body to the nearest sitting 
magistrate, and clamorously lay their case before his worship, 
who gravely informs them, that the Charitable Chums' Benefit 
Society being duly enrolled according to Act of Parliament, 
he can render them no assistance, as he is not authorised to 
interfere with their proceedings. 

In the face of this exposure, the agitation for cramming the 
society down the throats of the public goes on more desperately 
than ever. By this means, Mr. JNogoe manages to hold on. till 
Christmas, and then pocketing his salary, resigns his office 
in favour of Mr. Dunderhead, who has hitherto figured as 
honorary Yice- Something, and who enters upon office with a 
gravity becoming the occasion. Under his management, affairs 
are soon brought to a stand-still. Notwithstanding his pro- 
found faith in the capabilities of the Charitable Chums, and 
his settled conviction that their immense body must embrace 
the elements of stability, his whole course is but one rapid 



358 CURIOSITIES OP LOXDOX LIFE. 

descent down to the verge, and headlong over the precipice, 
of bankrupcy. The dismal announcement of "no effects," 
first breathed in dolorous confidence at" the bedsides of the 
sick, soon takes wind. All the C. C.'s in London are aghast 
and indignant at the news; and the "Mother Bunch" is 
nightly assailed by tumultuous crowds of angry members, 
clamorous for justice and restitution. The good lady who 
hangs over the door-way, in no wise abashed at the multitude, 
receives them all with open arms. Indignation is as thirsty as 
jollity, and to their thirst at least she can administer, if she 
cannot repair their wrongs. Xogoe has vanished from the 
locality of the now thriving inn and tavern of his friend Mr. 
Peter Bowley, and in the character of a scapegoat, is gone 
forth to what point of the compass nobody exactly knows. 
The last account of him is, that he had gone to the Isle of 
Man, where he endeavoured to get up a railway on the Ex- 
haustive Principle, but without effect. As for that excellent 
individual, Bowley, he appears among the diddled and discon- 
solate Chums in the character of a martyr to their interests. 
A long arrear of rent is due to him, as well as a lengthy bill 
for refreshments to the various committees, for which he 
might, if he chose, attach the properties in his keeping. He 
scorns such an ungentlemanly act, and freely gives them up ; 
but as nobody knows what to do with them, as, if they were 
sold, they would not yield a farthing each to the host of 
members, they remain rolled up in his garret, and are 
likely to remain till they rot, the sole memorials of a past 
glory. 

The Charitable Chums' Benefit Society has fulfilled its 
destiny, and answered the end of its creation. It has made the 
world acquainted with the undeniable merits of the "Mother 
Bunch," and encircled that modest matron with a host of 
bibulous and admiring votaries ; it has elevated Bowley from 
the class of struggling and desponding speculators to a sub- 



THE CHAKITABLE CHUMS' BENEFIT CXTJB. 359 

stantial and influential member of the Licensed Victuallers' 
Company : it has at once vastly improved the colour of his 
nose and the aspect of his bank- account ; and while he com- 
placently fingers the cash which it has caused to flow in a 
continual current into his pocket, he looks remarkably well in 
the character of chief mourner over its untimely fate. 



360 



HOW LONDON GROWS. 



A drop of ink from our pen, falling upon the pad of blotting- 
paper upon which it is our custom to lay the narrow strips of 
"cream-laid" upon which we write, suggests no inappropriate 
figure of the subject we are going to write about. A round, 
well-defined drop at first, it gradually dilates and expands in 
size, and assumes a ruggedness of outline as it enlarges, the 
little ridges flying off in every direction, radiating still farther 
and farther from the centre, just as the circle of London 
grows bigger and wider by stretching away on all sides from 
the original confines of the city. The comparison holds good 
so long as any moisture remains to be absorbed ; but soon the 
ink dries up, and there is an end of it — which cannot be said 
of the bricks and mortar, the sum and substance of our theme. 
In the little two-pair back-room where we now sit, with a 
few score of well-thumbed volumes for our sole companions, 
if we except the cheerful fire which brightens up gratefully 
for every morsel of food it gets, and all day long singeth a 
quiet tune — we sat on this day seven years. Nothing material 
has changed within the four walls since then ; but without — 
on the other side of the thin window-pane which keeps out 
this cold March wind — everything is so completely transformed 
or superseded, that it really requires a powerful effort of the 
imagination to assure one's self of the fact, that we have not 
been spirited away into another region, or changed by wicked 



HOW LONDON GROWS. 361 

magic into some other respectable elderly gentleman residing 
in some other equally respectable neighbourhood. Then — in 
those days of far eld — as we sat in our arm chair, and gazed 
out of the window, it was a lovely landscape that met our 
view — lovely at least in the eyes of a Londoner. The end- 
wall of our patch of a garden abutted upon an extensive tract 
of level land, cultivated as market- gardens and nursery-grounds, 
among which the little one- storied brick or wooden cottages 
of the cultivators sent up wreaths of smoke, which curled 
pleasantly among the poplar trees and aspens ; while the voice 
of Polly Brown calling Bob her husband to his twelve o'clock 
dinner, or the prattle of children, or the song of the lark in 
the sky, which was heard all the summer- day long — were the 
only sounds which struck upon the ear, save the distant hum 
of London when the south-west wind blew. Beyond the 
garden and nursery- grounds, there rose a mixture of meadows 
and waste land, upon which we have often watched the fowler 
spreading his nets, and planting his decoys, waiting by the 
hour together on bended knee for the chance of titlark or 
goldfinch fluttering shyly above the toils. In the distance, 
stood the dark-green hill of Highgate, crowned with its 
solitary spire; to the left of which, a glimpse of further 
Hampstead terminated the prospect. Now, if we turn our 
eyes in the same direction, what do we see ? Bricks and tiles, 
and staring windows, from which, for aught we know, a 
thousand eyes may be looking down upon us ; and there, a few 
yards or so to the left, the deep gorge of a railway cutting, 
which has ploughed its way right through the centre of the 
market- gardens, and burrowing beneath the carriage-road, and 
knocking a thousand houses out of its path, pursues its cir- 
cuitous course to the city. The cottages have vanished, and 
given place to a magnificent square, around which a score or 
more of tall streets, all undeniably genteel, and filled with 
inhabitants all undeniably genteel too, attest the gentility of 
the quarter. Where the lark sung in the clouds, there is no 



362 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

ornithological utterance to be heard hut that confounded chat- 
tering of impudent Cockney sparrows, which are invariably 
the first tenants that take possession of a London house, and 
are to its roof what, at a later period of its existence, the rats 
become to its cellars — a pest and a nuisance. "Where the 
fowler was wont to spread his nets, the poulterer now spreads 
his fowls ; the smell of the new-mown hay is superseded by the 
smell of burning bricks ; and as for the green fields and the 
distant hills of Highgate and Hampstead, they might as well 
be a hundred miles off, for all the good they do us behind a 
screen of solid brick five or six furlongs in thickness. 

But a truce to complainings. Let us endeavour to trace 
the progress of this mighty change, and see, if we can, how 
it is brought about. For the first symptoms of the approach 
of brick and mortar — the invasion of the country by the 
town, we must look further a- field than a stranger might 
suppose. The grass is waving, the oxen are browsing, and 
the sheep are nibbling at this moment on the sites of a hun- 
dred thousand houses, which are already in existence upon 
paper, locked up in lawyers' tin- cases, or in the architect's 
cabinet. The land upon which these are to be built is let 
upon short leases to gardeners, dairymen, cattle-drovers, and 
in some cases to farmers, who make the most of it for the 
short term they occupy, and with as little outlay as possible. 
At length contracts are completed, and the long-meditated 
plans have to be executed. On a sudden, the hedges and 
fences disappear ; roads are staked out ; and the verdant earth 
is flayed, the green hide being roiled up in strips of a foot in 
width, and sold for laying down in other places. This pro- 
cess is, however, often seriously interfered with by the 
travelling turf- seller, who never goes further than he can help 
for his merchandise, and feels that he has a natural right in 
all unfenced land. Then commences the sinking of clay-pits ; 
the digging of flat ponds for the collection of water from all 
the rivulets or ditches in the neighbourhood ; the erection of 



HOW LONDOX GltOWS. 363 

high mounds, on which you may see a blind horse revolving 
in a perpetual circle, dragging round the ponderous single 
wheel that grinds the limestone ; the setting up of pug mills 
for mixing the clay ; and the piling of rough sheds, to screen 
the brick- makers from the heat of the sun during their toil- 
some labour, which, throughout the summer months, is pursued 
without intermission from the first glimmer of dawn until 
darkness puts an end to their work. In the course of a fort- 
night or less, the garden or the meadow is changed into a 
brick-factory, and soon interminable rows of gray bricks are 
seen stretching away in all directions, crowned with loose 
straw to protect them from passing showers. Then begins 
the burning of the bricks — a process in which the Londoners 
seem particularly unfortunate, judging from the lumps, as big 
as haystacks, which are here and there to be seen burnt into 
solid masses, and fit for nothing but to be broken up for road- 
making, and dear at a gift for that. 

Pending the making of the bricks, foundations have been 
dug, and now a crop of handsome houses, arranged as streets, 
crescents, squares, or detached villas, springs out of the ground 
with a celerity hardly intelligible to the casual visitor. 
Simultaneously with the building, the carpenters' work has 
been going on in a huge temporary workshop erected on the 
spot. No sooner are the carcasses completed, than the interior 
fittings are ready to be adjusted ; and if the demand for houses 
be brisk, or the neighbourhood a favourite one, you shall see 
a whole town born into being in a summer, and peopled ere 
the winter sets in by a colony of comfortable well-to-do 
strangers, who seem to have come into being for the express 
purpose of being absorbed into the evergrowing metropolis. 

We have been describing the creation of a district of the 
genteeler sort, altogether new, and fashionably far from the 
seats of business. But it will as frequently happen, that the 
locality to be built upon is already occupied more or less with 
dwellings of the poorer class. There are, and always have 

b 2 



364 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LZFE. 

been, within our recollection, extensive outlying districts in 
the suburbs of London, very strongly resembling the hetero- 
geneous regions of squatters in a new settlement. You are 
walking, for the sake of exercise, some fine morning in a 
quarter with which you are unacquainted, and determine to 
explore it for the sake of gratifying your curiosity. Suddenly 
you step off the pavement, out of the long brick-street, which 
it has taken you ten minutes to traverse, and find yourself in 
a new world. The road is black mould, sprinkled over with 
oyster- shells, broken crockery, and remnants of old sauce- 
pans, and sunk in ruts, a single pair, a foot deep, between 
which the grass grows rank and long ; it is flanked by a couple 
of deep ditches, across which, on either side, at the distance 
of about twenty paces apart, a couple of rotten planks, laid 
side by side, serve for a bridge. Grhosts of forlorn donkeys, 
or at anyrate donkeys not in the flesh, wander moodily about, 
nosing the rank herbage, and anon waking the dismal echoes 
with a bray of disappointment at the unsavoury fare. The 
further side of either ditch is guarded by a hedge of alders, 
which, being but a sorry fence, is supplemented with the 
staves of old casks pitched all over, and surmounted with dry 
twigs and sticks carelessly thrown between the straggling 
branches of the alders. If you step upon the bridge of plank, 
and peep over the top of the blue door, the hinges of which 
you will observe are manufactured from an old shoe, you will 
see at the end of the patch of ground which serves as a 
garden, a wretched cottage of two rooms, in one of which a 
woman is working at the wash-tub, while a young girl is 
stretching a line between the forks of a few tall fagot-sticks, 
in preparation for drying the clothes. There is nothing in 
the garden save the fading remains of a potato-bed, and a few 
rows of gigantic cabbage- stumps, nearly a yard high, which 
may have been planted originally, for aught you know, when 
the cottage was first built. You pursue your way, and now 
the road is bedizened with fragments of shining tin, in circles 



HOW LONDON GEOWS. 365 

and triangles, and long strips, which cling abont your feet; 
and glancing through the hedge at your left, you perceive the 
tinman, or tinker, which you choose, pattering away at a 
kettle which he holds between his knees, as he sits on the 
ground at the door of his wooden hut. The tinker's garden, 
however, is in better trim than the washerwoman's ; he has 
no occasion to use it for a drying-ground ; and, having a fancy 
for onions, he has laid out a pretty patch of them, and they 
are thriving well. Xext to the tinker dwells a shoemaker, 
whose wife is again a washerwoman ; and next to him is a 
basket-maker, who has a decent fence next the ditch, having 
devoted a few twigs from his store to the repair of the hedge. 
A little further on, and you come upon a settlement that 
covers a space of some hundreds of square acres ; and observe 
that, with very few exceptions, all the dwellings are cottages 
of one floor, having little brick- chimneys protruding crookedly 
from their roofs, like the feet of a pigeon in the preterplu- 
perfect tense through the crust of a pie. You will come to 
the conclusion, as you look around, that everybody's wife is a 
washerwoman, with the exception of the dog- stealer's, whose 
husband is too much of a gentleman to allow his better-half 
to waste her time at the tub, which she can spend more 
profitably in the exercise of his profession ; and that a good 
many of the husbands, too, are in some sort washermen, 
engaged in the fetching, carrying, and hanging-out depart- 
ments. Most of them, in spite of their confined quarters, 
take in lodgers, chiefly navvies and bricklayers' labourers, 
whom, it is to be presumed, they stow away in the little 
cock-lofts under the pantiles. Yonder is a little chapel called 
" Jireh," whence a very loud voice may be heard issuing on a 
"Wednesday night or a Sunday morning ; and not far from it, 
with a tattered union-Jack flying over the roof, is a Tom-and- 
Jerry shop, the landlord of which supplies treble X and 
ninepins for the accommodation of the neighbourhood. 

But this happy district, whieh enjoys the designation of 



366 crEiosniES of loxdox life. 

Tittlebat Fields, or something very like it, has been let for 
building. The tenants are served with a summary notice to 
quit by a certain day. The happy man who has a little free- 
hold on the spot is bought out, or he refuses to be bought out, 
and remains and lives in his beggarly cottage, till the light of 
heaven is shut out of it by an enclosure of high walls. The 
whole colony takes wing, and, scattering in all directions, 
settles down again in some kindred locality, further than ever 
from the centres of fashion. The mode of building upon a 
district such as this, differs very materially from that pursued 
in the former case. The bricks are not made upon the spot, 
but brought from the brick-grounds, which lie beyond the 
region. The level of the Jand is too low to allow of the 
required drainage, and has to be raised perhaps ten or a dozen 
feet. The first step, therefore, is the building of the road- 
ways which are to intersect the district. These are raised 
much in the same manner as are the embankments for 
railways — by carting earth and rubbish from the nearest 
depositary, and shooting it on the spot. A lively German 
writer, in a late work, has described the inhabitants of London 
as residing in houses built in ditches on each side of the roads. 
He would have been more correct had he said, that the roads 
were built up to the level of the ceilings of the basement- 
rooms — such being in practice the general rule. The floor of 
the so-called underground kitchen of a London house was 
never really under ground, but was laid originally a trine above 
the level of the soil, and even in many cases at a considerable 
elevation above the level. As fast as the roads are formed, 
the houses, built according to a certain plan, to which the 
builders are bound to adhere, rise rapidly on either side of 
them. It will be frequently observed, however, that they 
halt at a certain stage for weeks or months, and, indeed, 
occasionally for years, before they advance to completion. 
This is evidence of a state of affairs which we shall have to 
notice presently. As the advancing suburb pushes its way 



HOW LOXDOX GEOWS. 367 

forwards, it gradually eats up the old neighbourhood. What 
trees there are, are felled, unless they happen to stand in some 
patch allotted for a garden, or in the identical spot which 
forms the boundary between the footpath and the road, in 
which case they are always left standing, and are sure to 
operate as a recommendation in the eyes of new-comers. 
The abandoned cottages are broken up into material for the 
new houses, of which their old bricks go to form the party- 
walls ; and hence it frequently comes to pass, that you may 
remove to a new house, and find it literally swarming with 
vermin before it has ever been inhabited by human beings. 
A couple of years or so suffices to transform Tittlebat Fields 
into Tittlebat Town, with a splendid new church and congre- 
gational chapel, and swarming with inhabitants. Where 
they all come from is a mystery not easily solved, and not 
accountable for by the increase of population, which, as we 
learn from the returns, goes on but at the rate of 400 or 500 
a week — though that is something. 

Of the art and mystery of the builder's occupation, we do 
not pretend to know much; but judging from the numbers 
engaged in it, and from the evidences of their industry con- 
stantly rising around us, it cannot be a very unprofitable busi- 
ness. Doubtless it requires a good capital to carry it on to the 
greatest advantage ; but this is constantly done, and that in a 
pretty large way, by men of no capital at all, beyond a little 
ready-money to meet the Saturday-night's wages. Whole 
miles of streets in London are built upon speculation, some- 
what in the following way : by men who have little to lose, 
and everything to hope for. Chips the carpenter joins with 
Hod the bricklayer in renting a piece of ground for a term of 
eighty or ninety years. Neither of them, perhaps, has money 
enough to erect a single house ; but between them they con- 
trive to get up a couple of carcasses as high as the second or 
third story, and there they stop. They can go no further ; 
but at this stage of the proceeding the houses are mortgage- 



368 curiosities or lokdoit llfk 

able ; and if the situation be a good one, holding out the pro- 
spect of a speedy tenancy, capitalists are readily to be found 
who will advance money upon mortgage for their completion; 
if, on the contrary, the situation be not promising, and there 
be any stigma of unhealthiness resting on the locality, the 
speculating builders may wait a long while for the relief of the 
mortgagee, which explains the phenomenon we have alluded 
to in a former paragraph. With the money advanced upon the 
two first houses, Messrs. Chips and Hod can finish them, and 
put up the semi-carcasses of a couple more ; and so on and on 
until the whole of their land is covered. If the houses let — 
and that is almost invariably the case — they do well, and in 
course of time pay off the mortgages ; if they do not let, the 
loss is comparatively little ; and this, moreover, in the present 
day so rarely happens, that it forms the exception, and not the 
rule. Of course, in these speculations, everything depends 
upon the judgment of the builders. It will sometimes hap- 
pen, that a row of houses built in a style of expense beyond 
the requirements of the neighbourhood, will have to stand 
empty, or to be let at an unremunerative rent ; on the other 
hand, if the houses erected be such as to command but a low 
rent, the ground-rent, which is always high, the repairs, and 
the interest of capital, will be hardly covered by the receipts. 
Notwithstanding all such contingencies, however, the builders 
manage their affairs pretty satisfactorily. We could point to 
more than one who, a dozen years ago, wrought with their 
own hands at the carpenter's bench, and who are now in the 
receipt of a clear rental of above a thousand a year each, after 
all drawbacks are paid. If there be any mystery in this, 
the solution of it will be found in the difference between 
the rate at which money can be borrowed in the market, and 
the average income it produces when invested in inhabited 
houses. 

The pedestrian who has been accustomed to perambulate 
the bounds of London during the last quarter of a century, 



HOW LOXDOX GEOWS. 369 

asks what has become of all those snug and luxurious man- 
sions embosomed in the foliage of lofty elms, and surrounded 
with acres of lawn and shrubbery, the whole enclosed with 
high walls, and guarded by a comfortable porter's lodge, 
which, thirty, twenty years ago, stood like citadel sanctuaries 
in a hundred pleasant spots on the verge of the great Babel ? 
Gradually they have nearly all disappeared. Mammon, under 
the specious aspect of " ground-rent," has come with the 
bray of his brazen trumpet, and the lofty walls have fallen as 
flat as those of Jericho at the blast of the rains' horns. The 
sacred groves have submitted to the axe ; the carpeted green- 
sward has given up its quiet being; the land being first adver- 
tised, "To be let on Building Leases — inquire of Threefoot 
Rule, Esq.," is swallowed up by all-devouring London; the 
mansion itself is nowhere, and the owner is off somewhere, 
with £5,000 a year added to his income. 

This brings us naturally to a few words on ground- rent — 
the great bugbear of builders and speculators, and of all who 
have property in houses, and have not the good fortune to be 
the proprietors of a freehold. Of the ground within the 
boundaries of the city proper, it is probable that the larger 
proportion belongs to the corporation of London. Its value 
for building purposes is in the precise ratio of its contiguity 
to the channels of traffic. An out-of-the-way spot, compara- 
tively unfrequented, may be rented at a moderate sum ; whilst 
a single rood of land, in the very centre of activity, will 
realise a princely income. In one street you shall hire a house 
of a dozen rooms for £50 or £60 a year; and in another, 
you may pay £250 for a couple of rooms, one of which the 
daylight never enters from one year's end to the other. In 
the best situations, the value of the ground is so enormous, 
that the premises standing upon it add but a mere per-centage 
to the amount of the annual rent. We could point to houses 
hardly large enough for a comfortable family residence, in the 
occupation of tradesmen doing business behind their counters, 

e 3 



370 CTEIOSITTES OF loxdox life. 

and paying for gronnd-rent alone £300, £400, and £500 a 
year each. This abnormal value has grown up with the 
increase of traffic ; and the question has often been mooted, 
whether it is morally right that a factitious wealth, which the 
public has created, should be exclusively enjoyed by those 
who have done little or nothing towards producing it ? Here 
is a question for the casuists, which we must leave them to 
decide. 

"Without the boundaries of the city, the land is mostly the 
property of the nobility and aristocracy of the country. The 
Edwards and Henrys of former times thoughtlessly gave away 
vast tracts of it to court favourites in reward for small services, 
real or imaginary. They little thought what a mine of wealth 
they were conferring upon the descendants of the fortunate reci- 
pients. The holders of these lands, however, were not slow 
in appreciating their value, and they bought up, while it could 
be done cheaply, the fields lying adjacent to their grants. At 
the present time, we must wander to a good distance from the 
city limits to get altogether clear of the estates of my Lord 
This, the Duke of That, or Earl Somebody, to say nothing of 
the lands of which Mother Church is the guardian. As Lon- 
don increased in size, these lands of course were covered with 
buildings, every one of which, in due time, became the pro- 
perty of the owners of the soil. The land is let for building 
rarely for a longer term than eighty or ninety years ; and a 
condition of the lease binds the builder, his heirs, executors, 
and administrators, to deliver up the houses to the ground- 
landlord, in good repair, at the expiration of the term. This, 
be it observed, is no formal clause merelv. We once rented a 
house, which "fell in," as it is termed, to the ground-landlord 
during our tenancy. Eighteen months before the close of the 
lease, a surveyor came down upon us, in the cause of the 
ground-landlord, and enforced a thorough overhauling of the 
dwelling from the roof to the cellars, with re-painting, re- 
papering, carpentering, and locksmithing, the cost of which 



HOW LONDON GEOWB. 371 

was deducted from the landlord's rent. The effect upon the 
incomes of the aristocracy of this mode of doing business, 
may be best estimated from the single fact, that there fell into 

the Duke of , a few years ago, owing to the lapse of the 

ground-leases of one estate, a clear rental which was estimated 
at £300,000 a year. In this manner, by building on land 
rented for a limited period, a species of architecture is pro- 
duced which stands at the lowest point in the scale of taste. 
There is an old distich which says, 

The realm of Old England shall never be undone, 
Till Highgate Hill stands in the middle of London. 

The speculators in land for building appear to have perfect 
faith in this suggestive legend. Looking upon what has been 
done, and at what the railways promise to do, they recognise 
no boundary to the extension of the metropolis. Away to all 
points of the compass, and far beyond the limits of any town- 
district, all the purchaseable land has been bought and sold, 
and sold again. Even though utterly unproductive, as some 
of it is, it is constantly rising in value, and a good deal of it 
as constantly changing owners. This branch of speculation 
appears to be a favourite source of excitement among retired 
tradesmen — old hands at business, with judgments matured 
in the experience of bargains, not a few of whom, to our 
knowledge, have more than doubled their capital since they 
bade adieu to the shop-counter, and gave up, as they imagined 
finally, the idea of money-making. These cunning old fellows 
never build — they know better. They know that Highgate 
Hill will get into the middle of London in good time without 
their dabbling in bricks and mortar ; but there is no reason 
why these substantial materials should not be made to pay 
toll to their sagacity as they proceed on their destined march. 
They may be met with on a dry walking- day, either in winter 
or summer, pacing a slope of ground, or measuring it with a 
walking-stick exactly a yard in length, or copying the con- 



372 CURIOSITIES OF LOKDOK" LIFE. 

ditions of lease or sale into their corpulent pocket-books from 
the black board mounted on a pole, upon which the required 
information is inscribed in white letters. London advances 
through the gripe of their itching palms, and hastens to 
accomplish her destiny with a speed nothing retarded by their 
interference. Already have the columns of brick advanced to 
the very foot of Highgate Hill, and the green sides of that 
picturesque acclivity, spotted with red and white patches, 
begin to manifest unmistakeable symptoms of the advancing 
tide of population. Highgate Hill may never be the centre 
of the metropolis ; but that it is destined, in a few short years, 
to be clad in a mantle of red brick, few who have witnessed 
the systematic measures in progress in that direction during 
the present reign will feel inclined to doubt. 



373 



THE CITY INQUEST EOE THE POOE. 



I keep a shop in the City, and open it every morning as 
Bow Chnrch bells are ringing out eight o'clock. I pay a very 
heavy rent, as well as Queen's taxes and poor's-rates; and I 
could do neither, to say nothing of maintaining my family, if 
I did not mind my business, and work hard. But, by the help 
of constant attention and industry, I am happy to say, I am 
able to make my shop keep me and my family too, which it 
does comfortably, and lifts me, in some sort, above the world, 
and enables me to bear the character, which I should always 
like to retain, of a respectable man. 

"We dwellers in London City proper are supposed to enter- 
tain a very high regard for respectability, and so we do ; and 
I am going now to detail the operations of what, I suppose, 
must be called an institution altogether peculiar to the City, 
of which the world out of the City knows very little, and 
which has been in being I don't know how many centuries — 
before there were any poor-laws, or any " good Queen Bess ;" 
and which must have been a respectable affair — if I am any 
judge of what that means — from the very first, whenever that 
was. It is a good thing to relieve necessity in any shape, and 
a better thing to help it to help itself; but to dispense charity 
without doing a mischief in some way or other, either by re- 
warding imposture, encouraging idleness, or repressing the 
springs of self-reliance or self- exertion, is about the hardest 



374 CURIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LIFE. 

business I have ever had to do with, and I have had some 
knotty affairs to get through in my time. Now, the various 
wards of the City do every year, I think, manage this difficult 
matter very carefully and efficiently, though not without 
a good deal of trouble ; and as I think their mode of doing 
it sets a good example, I have made up my mind to let the 
public know something about the Inquest for the Poor, which 
comes off in December every year. I believe it will be a 
novelty to most people out of the City limits, and to not a few 
within them as well. What I know about it, I have derived 
from experience : that, indeed, is all I have to relate ; and 
when I have told my tale, the reader will be as wise as I am, 
in this respect at least. 

About the middle of last December, I received a citation to 
attend a wardmote, to be held in the school-room of my parish. 
I was in expectation of this summons, as, the parishioners 
being called upon in rotation, I knew that my turn would 
come on upon this occasion. The number of tradesmen, who 
must be all of respectable character, summoned to the first 
meeting, is always greater than the number required to serve 
on the inquest, because many find it very inconvenient, and 
others find it impossible, to give their services. Valid ex- 
cuses are admitted in plea against the performance of the 
duty ; but a frivolous excuse is not allowed ; and a tradesman 
whose turn it is to serve, if he can prefer no good reason for 
not serving, must serve or pay the fine. Six guineas is the 
heavy penalty inflicted upon a recusant who declines service 
altogether. This preliminary meeting is called merely to in- 
sure a sufficient company to be in attendance in the vestry of 

Church, at the general wardmote held on St. Thomas's 

Day. 

After an early breakfast on the morning of the day above 
named, I repaired to the vestry, which was very fully attended, 
and where, in the course of the forenoon, the common- council- 
men for the ward were elected for the ensuing year, and, their 



THE CITY INQUEST POU THE POOE. 375 

election settled, were all duly admonished respecting their 
duties by the chairman. Then, from the number of respectable 
tradesmen in attendance, myself and eleven others were elected 
to prosecute the inquest for that year on behalf of the poor ; 
and we in our turn were admonished by the same authority, 
that we were not to compass any treason, nor to conspire 
against Her Majesty the Queen — than which, I am very sure, 
nothing could have been further from our thoughts. The in- 
quest being thus incorporated, we proceeded to elect a foreman 
and a treasurer, and to decree fines for non-attendance. The 
fines were appropriated to the payment of expenses, no part of 
the money collected being available for any other purpose 
than that of charity. The collection commenced by a con- 
tribution from each member of the inquest, each giving libe- 
rally, and setting a generous example. All these necessary 
preliminaries being settled, every man of us got into a hand- 
some cloak, trimmed with fur, hired for the occasion, at a cost 
of five shillings per head, and, with the beadle of the ward 
blazing in scarlet and gold, pacing majestically beneath a 
three-cornered hat, and pushing a ponderous gold mace in 
advance, we were marched off to Guildhall, to pass muster 
before Gog and Magog, and to be presented to his worship the 
lord mayor. His lordship, who was surrounded by a staff of 
officials in gorgeous liveries, was very glad to see us : indeed 
he told us so — said that he was extremely gratified at receiv- 
ing so highly respectable a company, and expressed more than 
once his satisfaction at finding that we were so ready to act in 
the cause of charity as to sacrifice our valuable time, and unite 
together for the succour of the distressed. He addressed us, 
in fact, for nearly a minute and a half : after which, as time 
was pressing, and others were waiting to be presented, we 
were signalled forward to a side-door, and made a very sudden 
exit into the street, whence we marched back to the vestry to 
disrobe, with the exception of some few of our number, who 
knowing that the business of the charity was done for the day, 



376 CUKIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

abandoned their cloaks to the care of the owner, who contrives 
generally to be in attendance at this critical moment, and pro- 
ceeded to look after their own private affairs. We all met, 
however, in the evening, and partook of a substantial dinner, 
to which, according to a custom which has prevailed from 
time immemorial, the churchwardens of the parish and the 
foreman and treasurer of the inquest of the preceding year 
were invited. The dinner went off, as a dinner should do, 
with perfect harmony and good feeling ; and some very ex- 
cellent speeches were made on the subject of the inquest — its 
undeniable efficacy and utility, and its great antiquity. We 
broke up at a sober hour, each member being charged to pre- 
sent himself at the vestry at nine in the morning on that day 
week, under the penalty of half-a-guinea. 

It would have suited my interests very well, when the day 
came round, to have forfeited my half-guinea, and have 
attended exclusively to my own business ; but judging it more 
to my credit to go through with the work I had undertaken, 
I was at my post, together with several of my colleagues, before 
the hour had struck. Some of our members did not come at 
all the first day, but sent their half- guineas ; others, having to 
come in from the suburbs before omnibus-time, arrived too 
late, and were fined in smaller sums for the breach of punc- 
tuality. Our party being at length complete, to the number 
of ten, we indue our cloaks, and, pioneered by the ward- 
beadle with his ponderous mace, we sally forth to feel the 
charitable pulse of several parishes — ten good men and true, 
swathed to the chin in voluminous folds of broad- cloth fringed 
with fur, and headed by the ample proportions of the mace- 
bearer in scarlet and cloth of gold ; our apparition, and our 
mission too, were plainly a mystery to the major part of the 
population, who, seeing us but once a year, and then but mo- 
mentarily, as the procession emerges suddenly from one door to 
plunge into another, do not very well know what to make of 
it. "Is that there a buryin' or a marry in'?" "What's that 



THE CITY IS QUEST FOE THE POOR. 377 

lot o' fellows after ?" " What's up now, Jem?" "Is that 
red-legged cove Cardinal Wiseman ?" — such are a few of the 
inquiries which from time to time testified the astonishment of 
the uninitiated; to all of which our imperturbable leader 
opposed a face as impenetrable as that of the sphinx of the 
Desert. "We should have been sadly at a loss, by the way, 
without him. He knew every soul in the whole ward who 
would come down to the extent of a sixpence for the sake of 
the poor ; and he led his small phalanx boldly to the charge 
through all impediments. Under his guidance, we did what 
certainly we should never have attempted without it. We 
stormed the stout citadels of the merchants, and carried their 
strongholds up as high as the third and fourth floors, and 
captured many a poor man's dinner from the very jaws of the 
cash-box. We dived into cellars, and crouched and crept into 
subterranean dens. We threaded muddy lanes, and wandered 
among bewildering wharfs, and mounted lofts and sheds, and 
squeezed ourselves into all sorts of out-of-the-way slums. We 
climbed ladders leading up into creaking timber galleries, and 
got into regions of old planks and cobwebs, dim with dust and 
odorous with ancient smells. We assailed the scholar at his 
studies, and the craftsman at his labour, and from all and each 
we met with a courteous reception, and gathered the sinews of 
benevolence. The dispositions of men vary in few things more 
than in their several modes of conferring a favour. Some of 
our most liberal donors thoughtfully sent their bank-notes to 
the vestry, to save us the trouble of waiting upon them : others, 
on the contrary, levied the full value of their gifts, by keeping 
us wearily waiting before we got them. A barber, whom we 
found at his block busily weaving a wig, and whose diminu- 
tive crib would not contain half our company, apologised 
because it was not in his power to do much for us, and then 
diffidently tendered a guinea. A portly dealer in feminine 
luxuries talked largely of the claims of our indigent brethren, 
and the sacred obligations of charity, and wound up his sono- 



378 CURIOSITIES OE LONDON LIEE. 

rous homily with, the climax of half-a- crown. "We found one 
burly gentleman, buried up to the elbows in red tape and 
legal documents, who professed a perfect horror, a rooted anti- 
pathy, to the poor in every snap?, and who had a decided con- 
viction that poverty was a nuisance which ought to be put 
down. When he had said this, and a great deal more, he 
very consistently lent a hand towards abating the nuisance, 
by presenting us with a contribution of double his usual an- 
nual subscription. When we had got out of earshot, our ex- 
perienced chaperon remarked to me : " When I heer'd him 
agoin' on so, I knowed he was agoin' to come down 'ansome. 
He's a wery nice genelman, what enjoys a grumble, and 
don't mind paying for it I" 

Our domiciliary visits occupied between three and four days, 
and the rain fell in torrents during the whole time. We were 
wet through in spite of the cloaks we wore, but canvassed the 
whole district successfully notwithstanding, and probably col- 
lected every shilling that was to be got. Our guide had so 
often felt the pulse of the whole ward in this way, that he 
never suffered us to waste our time or our demands upon those 
whom he knew to be impracticable ; and thus we got through 
the business much more quickly, as well as more prosperously, 
than we could possibly have done had we been left to our 
own resources. The result of our united labours was a purse 
of nearly two hundred pounds; and now came the more 
pleasant part of our duty — the distribution of alms, at a 
season when poverty is most severely felt, to the most deserv- 
ing of the most needy. 

The distribution took place a few days after the collection 
was finished. In the interim, blank tickets had been dis- 
tributed to such of the donors as chose to receive them, upon 
which they inscribed the names of the poor persons whom they 
recommended for relief. The vestry where we were elected 
was the scene of the distribution. The body of the church 
was allotted for the accommodation of the poor ticket-holders, 



THE CITY IX QUEST FOE THE POOR. 379 

who formed a numerous and a very motley crowd, and who 
were called in to receive their dole in rotation, by the ward- 
beadle, from a list which he had prepared. I suspect, how- 
ever, that the system of rotation was not very rigidly observed, 
inasmuch as half-a-dozen women, with squalling children in 
their arms, were among the very first who were called in and 
dealt with, by which means something like peace and quiet- 
ness were obtained while the claims of the crowd of the re- 
maining applicants were severally considered. What followed 
was a very different affair from that which transpires weekly 
at the parish pay-table. I have been churchwarden, overseer, 
anil guardian of various parishes in my time, and I have seen 
the poor in all conditions and under all circumstances, and I 
thought I knew them well enough ; but I derived a new 
lesson now, and learned that it is possible for humanity to 
undergo the direst misfortunes without losing heart and hope 
— to drain the cup of misery to the dregs without becoming 
utterly selfish — and to be long immersed in the lowest depths 
of necessity, and yet be human still. I shall describe one or 
two of these hapless claimants upon the benevolence of their 
wealthy fellow citizens, premising that a few of them only 
are the recipients of parish pay. They see no disgrace, per- 
haps, in participating in a voluntary alms, because it is volun- 
tary, and, as such, cannot be regarded as the peculiar property 
of that numerous class who assert and maintain a life-interest 
in compulsory funds legally levied for their support. 

One of the first who seemed to attract general sympathy 
was an old, old man, trembling on the very verge of the grave, 
who had outlived almost every faculty of mind and body. He 
could walk only by instinct, advancing his foot mechanically, 
to save himself from falling when he was pushed gently for- 
wards. When standing, he could not seat himself — and 
when pitting, he could not get up without help. In 
whatever posture he was placed, there he remained. Altoge- 



380 CTTHIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

ther insensible to question and remark, he looked wildly round 
upon us, and smiled, and winked with both eyes. These 
were his sole remaining capabilities — to wink, and to look 
agreeable. He had been recommended as an object worthy of 
charity by a liberal donor, and he was brought in person to 
justify the recommendation. He was clean, and neat and 
tidily dressed, but evidently in a state of perfect unconscious- 
ness of everything around him. He had lived once, but it 
was in times long passed and gone : you might guess him to 
be what age you chose, but you could hardly think him older 
than he was ; time, who had stolen his faculties, had forgotten 
to wreck the casket that contained them ; the spirit of life had 
left its tenement, and, by some strange mistake, the animated 
machine had gone on without it. My neighbour, the watch- 
maker, compared him to a clock with the striking-train run 
down, and the works rusty beyond repair. He could not 
thank us for the alms we gave him, but he did all he could 
— he winked, and smiled, and tried to make a bow, but failed 
in the attempt, and resigned himself cheerfully to the care of 
his friends, who carried him off. 

Another quiet applicant was a lady, whose natural-born 
gentility poverty might obscure but could not conceal. Tears 
of want and struggling deprivation had dimmed her charms ; 
but they had neither bowed nor bent her stately form, nor 
quenched the inherent virtue of self-respect, nor deprived her 
of the correct and appropriate diction, and the winning and 
courteous expression which once graced a drawing-room. She 

was introduced to us by the beadle as Lady TV ; and 

although draped in very humble and well-worn apparel, she 
looked what she was — a gentlewoman in every sense of 
the word ; though beyond an empty title, she possessed hardly 
anything in the world. She answered our inquiries with a 
natural courtesy, which at least some of us felt to be a con- 
descension. "Gentlemen," she said, "it is true, asvourat- 



THE CITY IKQTJEST FOE THE POOE. 381 

tendant states, that I am a lady. In my youth, I married a 
titled man. I make no boast of that — it was, indeed, my 
misfortune. I was brought up and educated to occupy a sta- 
tion inferior to few : I filled that station for many years ; it 
is not for me to say how appropriately ; and though calamity 
has overtaken me now, and I have been familiar with neces- 
sity for so long a time, yet I feel that I am a lady still. I 
may be reproached with poverty, and that I can bear ; but I 
trust I shall never be justly reproached with having fallen to 
the level of my circumstances. I am grateful to you for the 
assistance you so kindly render me ; and I can express that 
sentiment, and feel it deeply, too, without humiliation, be- 
cause the aid you supply is as voluntary on your part as its 
acceptance is necessary on mine." "When our foreman had 
instinctively wrapped the donation awarded to her in a 
quarter sheet of letter-paper, and presented her with it, she 
bent with a dignified obeisance, and silently withdrew. 

A third applicant, worthy of a passing notice, was a lady of 
a very different stamp. "Who or what she had been in former 
years, I could not ascertain, but she appeared before us in the 
character of a middle-aged mince-pie monomaniac, and jam- 
tart amateur. The poor harmless creature was clad in the 
veriest shreds of dusky feminine attire, which barely shielded 
her limbs from the inclemency of the weather. She had a 
notion that she, too, was a lady, and that, being a lady, she 
was bound to live by the consumption of pastry and nothing 
else. We were admonished by our custodian that whatever 
amount we awarded her, whether it were much or little, 
would be forthwith consigned to the confectioner, in exchange 
for mince-pies and tarts of the very best quality ; and I regret 
to say, that this announcement had the effect of reducing con- 
siderably the sum she derived from the charity of the ward, 
and effectually preventing the consummation of any very 
formidable debauch with her favourite viands. But the poor 



382 CT7HI0SITIES OF LOKDOK LITE. 

simpleton was as merry as she was innocent and harmless ; 
and all unsuspicious of the latent grudge which had lessened 
her gratuity, tripped hastily off, to enjoy at least a delicious 
repast. 

After we had sat some hours, a very distressing case was 
brought forward. A poor woman, the wife of a working-man, 
and the mother of a young family, had been deserted by her 
husband, who had left her, besides her own children, the charge 
of his bedridden parents. Under this accumulation of burdens, 
she had been heroically struggling for some months, in the vain 
attempt, by her single energies, to ward off the approach of 
want, and to act at the same time the part of nurse to the old 
couple. She had succeeded in a great measure, and modestly 
sought but a little help to enable her to persevere in her 
arduous undertaking. 

Then came an old man, verging on fourscore, the very beau 
{deal of the merchant's serving-man of the last century. He 
had once been comparatively prosperous; but, judging from 
his cheerful face, perhaps hardly ever happier than he was 
now. Tor fifty years of his life he had been custos and confi- 
dential housekeeper to a well-known firm, which, after four or 
five generations of unvarying prosperity, had sunk in the 
panic of 1846 into the gulf of bankruptcy. In the general 
wreck that followed, old Benjamin was forgotten, or remem- 
bered only with a pang of unavailing regret. He found a 
refuge, however, in some small garret, where he contrives to 
preserve his cheerfulness and his pigtail, the only outward and 
visible sign of his former respectability, and where he acts as 
master of the ceremonies to a clique of ancient ladies, his 
fellow-lodgers, to whom he is at once the guardian and the 
beau of the fourth floor. When he had received his own little 
modicum of benevolence, he pleaded hard for the immediate 
settlement of the claim of one of his fair coterie, a widow of 
fourscore and five ; and finding that his request could not be 



THE CITY INQUEST FOR THE FOOR. 383 

complied with, but that she must be left till her turn came, he 
retired to a corner of the room, and waited a full hour and 
more, until her business was settled, when he bowed ceremo- 
niously, till his pigtail pointed to the zenith, and tendering 
his arm, escorted her home with all the vivacity and politeness 
of the days of hoops and high-heeled shoes. I have scarcely 
found out the reason why it was that the spectacle of this 
happy, kind old soul made me feel a little, only a little, 
ashamed of myself. 

This cosy old couple had hardly tripped out of sight, when 
our prosy synod was honoured by the advent of a real and 
extraordinary phenomenon. This was nothing less than a 
ragged, crazy improvisatrice, who advanced, full of jingling 
rhymes, which she delivered with a volubility perfectly start- 
ling. She had evidently the highest idea of her poetical quali- 
fications, and discharged her couplets in a perfect shower upon 
us, not a litile to the astonishment of myself and a few other 
strangers to her overpowering genius. The beadle quietly en- 
deavoured to moderate the flow of her eloquence ; but she de- 
nounced him as a " sorry Jack" for his pains, and was going on 
at a tremendous rate, rhyming Jack with back, thwack, crack, 
whack, &c. &c, when she was called to order in a manner that 
admitted of no demur — "Mrs. Margaret Maggs," roared the 
beadle ; and the tenth Huse, brought to a sudden stand-still, 
ceased her oracular utterances, and, grasping her modicum of 
shining silver, vanished from the presence. 

The distribution lasted the whole of the day ; and it was 
a weary day for some of the poor applicants, whose turns came 
last, and who almost fainted for want of refreshment. But 
all who deserved it, went home effectually relieved and glad- 
dened ; and many who did not, got a lesson upon the occasion, 
and learned that Charity is not always as blind as she is sup- 
posed to be. The whole of the money collected is not distri- 
buted at once. About a third part of the amount is reserved 



384 curiosities or lqhdoh life. 

until the approach of the next ensuing winter, when a second 
distribution takes place, generally to the same applicants. 

I have heard it insinuated before now, that city functionaries 
of all sorts are prone to take good care of themselves, whenever 
they meet to consider the wants of the poor. I may perhaps 
be allowed to say, that when we have a feast, we pay for it ; 
and that not one farthing of any collection made in the City 
for the poor was ever, to my knowledge, appropriated to any 
other purpose. As a respectable man, I, for one, would never 
countenance any intromission of that kind. 



385 



A PEOST PIECE — ST. JAMES'S PAEK. 



It is a day of hard frost, about the middle of February, and 
the hour is near noon ; in the country the air would be clear, 
with the exception of the few drifting snow-flakes which the 
east wind drives in fantastic courses ere they settle on the 
ground; but in London, though there is no fog, the smoke 
refuses to rise far above the level of the house-tops; and, con- 
gealed by the breath of winter, wraps every distant object in a 
semi-transparent curtain. We happen to be out for a ramble 
in the neighbourhood of Charing -cross, and gathering from 
certain unmistakeable indications, in the shape of new skates 
curiously crossed with virgin straps, and dangling from the 
hands of gentlemen about town, that the ice in St. James's 
Park will bear, we take a short cut through Spring-gardens, 
and in a few minutes are standing upon the banks of the 
"ornamental water," a spectator of the winter sport of the 
Londoner. The park presents a singular picture, not wanting 
in features of grandeur and beauty, but having these some- 
what comically contrasted with human peculiarities and 
oddities. The noble trees, stretching aloft their myriads of 
tiny hands to catch the falling snow flakes, stand vividly 
depicted in all their naked beauty against the leaden sky ; or 
farther on, half veiled in the wintry mist, show like imploring 
spectres in the act of vanishing from mortal vision. Away on 
the right, the Queen's palace looms dimly in the white haze, 
bearing the unsubstantial aspect of a monster erection of thin 



386 CURIOSITIES OP LONDON LIFE. 

grey and translucent tissue-paper, which a bird might pierce 
in its flight, or a breath might dissipate. The few houses 
that are visible through the heavy atmosphere are magnified 
to an abnormal size, and look like the shadowy structures of a 
by- gone time, or the colossal edifices eclipsed in the gloom of 
some of Martin's pictures. As we look around, the clock of 
the Horse-guards rings out the hour of noon, in notes so loud, 
clear, and close to the ear, that we are startled into the recog- 
nition of that national establishment, which, for all we can 
see of it, might be a hundred miles away. 

We find the banks of the lake thronged with spectators of 
both sexes, and all ages and classes ; among which, however, 
greatly predominate the boys and the hobbledehoys, who 
make up so important a part of the London population. They 
are the first in every crowd, for whatever purpose it may 
assemble ; and the first in every dangerous exploit, whether 
anything is to be got by it or not. Their presence on this 
occasion may serve to explain certain phenomena observable 
upon the banks and upon the frozen surface of the water. It 
is for their especial enlightenment that the poles surmounted 
with a board marked "dangerous" are set up — an admoni- 
tion which, notwithstanding, they never take in good part. 
They invariably prefer testing the ice themselves, by walking 
on to it, or under it, as may happen : and it is for the sake of 
checking this precocious spirit of experiment, that the edge of 
the ice all round the lake has been broken every morning 
since the frost set in, by men appointed for the purpose ; and 
hence it is that now, when it will bear, bridges of plank have 
to be laid down that they may get on and off. You may ob- 
serve, likewise, that ropes are laid across the ice from one 
bank to the other, in readiness to be drawn instantly to any 
part that may give way. The surface of the ice looks any- 
thing but tempting to a person not enamoured of its glittering 
aspect. It is starred with huge cracks, stretching sheer 
across the basin, and in some parts is flooded with water, 
welling up from broad holes; but in spite of that, it is 



A FEOST PIECE ST. JAMES'S PAKE. 387 

crowded with occupants eager in the pursuit of pleasure or of 
business, and all making the most of the few short hours of 
light afforded by the winter's day. Our parti- coloured friends 
and familiars, the poor ducks, geese, didappers, and foreign 
fowls of all sorts, not forgetting those rarce aves, the black 
swans, have got the worst of it just now : their impudence is 
completely frozen out of them, and, to all appearance, their 
animosity too ; for there they are yonder, all confined to one 
small pool broke for them by the humanity of the lodge- 
keeper, and wagging their variegated and thickly-feathered 
tails. Hard weather has taught them good behaviour, and 
misfortune, as it often does, has reconciled their feuds, and 
shown them that it may be politic to be birds of one family 
even though they are not of one feather. 

While admiring the graceful evolutions of some of the 
practised skaters, who seem to fly on the wings of the wind, 
and to be guided by the action of the will rather than the 
force of muscular exercise, we cannot help being struck with 
what appears to us a most undesirable change in the fashion 
of skating affected in the present day. When the young 
Benjamin "West exhibited his Adonis-like form upon the 
Serpentine to the supreme admiration of our grandmothers, 
we are very sure that he had too true and fine a sense of the 
graceful to be seen for a moment in the attitude which now is 
esteemed the perfection of the accomplishment. Every skater 
now- a- days who has learned to feel his feet upon the ice, 
aspires apparently to emulate the motion of the crab, and 
esteems it the climax of the art to be able to skate backwards, 
twisting his neck in such a way as to enable him to see 
behind him. Think of a man travelling five or six hundred 
yards in the act of sitting down, and alternately grinning 
over either shoulder lest he should come in contact with 
another performing the same preposterous feat! We turn 
from such an exhibition to yonder gentlemanly sample of the 
old school : he has employed a man to sweep a small space clear 
for him, not more than a dozen feet square, and on that he 

s2 



S88 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

occupies himself in cutting various small figures, all evidently 
devised originally to afford at once healthful exercise to the 
body and graceful postures for the limbs. He is a veteran in 
the art, and his motions are as easy as those of a gold fish in 
a glass globe. 

"While we are enjoying his gratuitous display, it is suddenly 
interrupted by the apparition of llr. Straddles, from West- 
minster, who being this morning screwed to a pair of skates 
for the first time, on which he is only able to support himself 
by the aid of a couple of stout walking sticks, is ohliged to go 
wherever they choose to take him ; and when they cannot 
agree upon that point, which, as he has a habit of turning out 
his toes, they never do long together, is obliged to come 
sprawling to the ground. There he goes again, with a flump ! 
that's the twentieth time that his heels have been on a level 
with his head this morning ; but no matter, he is picked up 
again in a twinkling by a brace of stipendiary sweepers, who 
have charge of him ; and he swims, straddles, staggers, and 
sprawls off again. Here comes a costermonger who has been 
out crying "live soles" ever since he left Billingsgate at six 
o'clock, before it was light. He invested sixpence in a pair of 
broken skates last night, and having levied the straps from his 
donkey-harness, is come to disport himself with the gentry for 
an hour or two. Yonder are a couple of mannikins, who hav- 
ing equal rights in a single pair of skates, and not being able 
to agree as to priority of claim, have divided the object of 
dispute and taken one each : they tumble about in emulation 
of each other ; and the first who shall tire of the pummeling 
he gets, will surrender to the other the instrument of torture. 
Here comes, bareheaded to the weather, without a shirt to his 
back, and only a couple of shreds of shoes to his feet, a cha- 
racteristic specimen of the nomadic population of London's 
vilest districts. Poor Josh the cadger, though his stomach is 
empty as his back is bare, and though he has neither skates to 
skate with, nor soles to his shoes to slide with, yet loves the 
ice with the instinct of his race, and must take his pleasure 



A FROST PIECE ST. JAMEs's PARK. 389 

upon it. A lump of ice is all the apparatus he demands, and 
with one foot, whose red toes peep out from the worn-out 
shoe, fixed firmly upon that, he propels himself forward with 
the other, shouting with the pleasurable excitement, and as 
insensible to the sharp arrows of the east wind as he is, alas ! 
to the duties and obligations of a life whose tenth winter finds 
him proof against all outward assaults. 

But it is worth while to turn our attention to the 
business part of the affair. "Wherever in London pleasure is 
sought, there business waits upon the seekers, and even though 
there be but a chance of turning a penny, the chance is not 
thrown away, and the penny is turned if possible. Hence we 
have here, on the ice in St. James's Park, professionals of 
various kinds doing a trade and earning small gains under 
circumstances in which a provincial would hardly think of 
gain at all. First, here is the skate-jobber : he has brought a 
long bench, upon which he displays a score or two of pairs of 
skates, of various value, and which he hires out by the hour, 
at a charge of from four-pence to a shilling. He screws them 
into your Wellingtons, and straps them on to your feet, and 
when you have deposited their value with him, not for fear 
that you, being a gentleman, should run away with them, but 
merely to insure himself from the accident of your getting 
under the ice, in which case your executors might demur to 
his claim; then, having the cash in hand, he leaves you 
to glide at your pleasure wherever you choose. He makes 
hay, not when the sun shines, but when the east wind blows 
and the snow falls ; and as he nets a few pounds in a good 
day, he would soon make a competence were the winters as 
durable here as they are in Holland. Next to the skate - 
jobber is the poor but handy fellow, who, having no capital, 
is proprietor of a chair or two and a gimlet, and who is 
glad to earn twopence by fastening on the skates of gentlemen 
who provide their own. When you have paid your twopence 
you are free of his chair, and may rest upon it whenever it is 
unoccupied and you are so disposed. Then come the sweep- 



390 craiosiTiES op loxdox life. 

gib; these are numerous, and if much snow be falling they 
have no sinecure : they sweep up the snow in a central mound, 
round which the skaters keep up a constant race : the contri- 
butions they levy are perfectly voluntary ; but their services 
are of too much value to pass unrewarded. Even if there be 
no snow, the ice becomes in a short time so cut up by the 
skaters as to render their brooms indispensible. They are a 
numerous fraternity, and each one of them has abandoned a 
crossing in some public thoroughfare, to enjoy the combination 
of pleasure and business upon the frozen surface of the water. 
3Text comes the strap -merchant : he is fringed around with 
dangling thongs of leather terminating in metal buckles, and 
his appearance is especially welcome to the proprietor of an 
old mildewed pair of skates, which, having been thrown by 
without cleaning after last winter's usage, will not submit to 
be buckled on without some portion at least of new harness. 
His stock-in-trade brings him a thumping profit, because he 
charges in a ratio settled by the necessities of the purchaser, 
rather than by the cost of production. His wares have a very 
suspicious resemblance to garters, under which denomination, 
in all likelihood, he retails them upon terra fir ma. And now 
a cheerful voice rings out in the frosty air, " Brandy- balls — 
balls — balls! Here you are! Brandy-balls, four a penny ! 
Hot spiced gingerbread — the raal sort — hot as fire!' This 
orator, who is an old soldier, is the dispenser of the only sort 
of refreshment to be obtained on the ice ; and he is a con- 
traband dealer who has smuggled his goods into the park, 
where no traffic is allowed, though in the present instance it 
is not thought worth while to interfere with him. His 
"brandy-balls" are a kind of globular sweetmeats, totally 
innocent of alcohol, which is represented by an extra dose of 
peppermint and perhaps a flavour of cayenne ; and his hot 
spiced nuts are a species of gingerbread, in the composition of 
which the ginger is out of all proportion with the bread — a 
single mouthful being enough to inflame your palate for the 
rest of the day. So soon as he makes his appearance, the lads 



A. FROST PIECE ST. JA^Es's PAE.K. 391 

flock round him with their pence, but a warning crack of the ice 
beneath their united weight scatters them like chaff, and, the 
old soldier first setting the example, there is a general run 
upon the bank, where he can do business in security, and soon 
disposes of the contents of his tray. 

By this time the surface of the ice is crowded to an extent 
altogether incompatible with the safety of the multitude, and 
hundreds more are hurrying to get on. The long slides are 
covered with straddling figures from one end to the other, and 
the skaters have gradually formed into an endless chain, 
which wheels round the whole area of the lake, at a few 
yards from the shore. The spectacle, though animated enough, 
is not very pleasant to look upon. The tent of the Royal 
Humane Society, where all the appliances for restoring 
suspended animation are ready for immediate use, suggests 
unpleasant associations. Numbers of the Society's men per- 
ambulate the banks ready for an emergency, which it is but 
too plain they are anticipating. Beneath the pressure of per- 
haps nine or ten thousand persons darting rapidly about in 
every direction, the surface of the ice bends and waves and 
undulates like the gentle swell of a summer sea. Suddenly 
an awful noise, comparable to no other natural sound that we 
know of, proclaims that the impending calamity has taken 
place ; it produces a general panic, during which there is a 
simultaneous rush to the shore, and the tumult on the ice is 
at an end, while all run eagerly to that part of the ground 
which commands the nearest view of the disaster. On turning 
our eyes in that direction, we are aware that a large section 
of the ice has given way, and that from ten to twenty indivi- 
duals, submerged up to their necks, are holding on to its 
sharp edges, to keep themselves from sinking. One of them 
has a friend skating near him, and who makes an effort to 
rescue him. Eirst he plucks the silken tie from his neck, and 
coming as near as he dares, tries to throw it within reach of 
his friend ; but the wind is against him, and blows it away. 
Then he tears off one of his skates, fastens that to the necker- 



392 CTJEIOSITIES OF LOXDOX LITE. 

chief, and swings it within the grasp of the imperilled lad ; 
now, with a long and steady puil, he strives to hoist him out, 
and has nearly succeeded when the frail silk breaks, and the 
poor fellow sinking over head and ears with a plunge is lost 
to view. But he rises again, shaking his head like a water- 
dog, and repeats the experiment : again it fails, and again he 
falls back into the icy flood. The third time, while, amid the 
encouraging cheers of the spectators, he is on the point of 
succeeding, the ice upon which his friend is standing gives 
way, and the two friends, now both submerged together, pre- 
sent their rueful faces over the edge of the ice, and beckon 
for assistance from shore. "While this has been going on, 
some few have already been extricated by means of ropes 
prudently laid across the ice in expectation of a demand for 
them. But now the Society's boat, a light, broad, flat- 
bottomed tub, is seen rapidly advancing in the distance, pro- 
pelled by a man who runs in its rear. Now it crashes over 
the edge of the ice, as the man who has it in charge throws 
himself into it, and it is floating buoyantly in the midst of 
the drowning skaters. In two or three minutes they are all 
lugged safe on board, and the boat, now heavily freighted, is 
pulled by ropes to the shore, splintering the ice like glass in 
its passage, and cheered by cries of " Bravo !" and the clap- 
ping of twenty thousand palms that line the banks, as though 
the whole thing were a dramatic spectacle got up for the pub- 
lic amusement; occasionally, however, the drama is turned 
into a tragedy, and the unhappy skater sinks before the eyes 
of the multitude to rise no more in life. 

The half- drowned patients become inmates of the Royal 
Humane Society's tent, where those that require it are put 
into a hot bath, and otherwise medicated until they are in a 
fit condition to be delivered over to their friends. A dose of 
extra strong stimulants enables a man of good constitution, 
who has not been long submerged, to walk home and take care 
of himself ; while it not unfrequently happens that another 
who escaped drowning through the timely aid of the Society 



A FKOST PIECE ST. JAMES'S PARK. 393 

shall die from the results of the accident ere the leaves are 
upon the trees. The number of persons thus rescued from 
almost certain death during the frosts of a long winter by the 
instrumentality of this society alone, is something almost in- 
credible. We have ourselves seen from thirty to forty pulled 
out in one day. The unlettered cockney looks upon all this 
as a matter of course ; he seems to think that he has an undis- 
puted right to risk his life if he choose, and that the Royal 
Humane Society "have a right" to save if they can, as a 
matter of business, and that accounts are square between 
them. 

One would think that the moral effect of such an event as 
we have above described would be to deter the spectators of 
it from incurring such a risk in their own persons : and so it 
is, for five or perhaps ten minutes — but not much longer. 
Hardly a quarter of an hour has elapsed since the rescue of 
their companions, and again the fascination of the ice has 
lured its votaries to the much-loved sport. As the day wanes 
the cold intensifies — the sloppy surface becomes frozen hard, 
and with this favouring circumstance, the sport goes on with 
greater vivacity than ever. It must, however, cease with the 
darkness, which closes in rapidly. The sweepers are the first 
to disappear; there is no longer any chance of coppers, and 
the poor fellows have been so long fasting, that they will be 
glad to exchange the few they have picked up for something 
substantial in the shape of a meal. The skate-jobber, who is 
threshing his own shoulders to keep them warm, must stay 
till his last customer is satisfied, which may not be till the 
laggards are warned off by the gate-keepers, when, as the 
park has to be closed for the night, all must clear out. The 
sharp wind has cleared the evening sky of clouds; the moon 
in her second quarter gleams palely aloft ; and the amateurs 
of skating, as they button up their great-coats, and turn up 
the collars about their ears, hug themselves with the agreeable 
conviction that " it will be a pelting hard frost to-night, and 
the ice will be as firm as brass to-morrow." 

s3 



394 



A DESEETED TILLAGE IX LONDOK 



Upon the site of what was once known as Toot Hill, or 
Tuttle, or Tote-Hill, and more lately as To thill Eields — 
fields long since dead as mummies, and shrouded in mortar 
and buried in bricks, stood the Tillage whose abandonment 
and transformation we have to deplore. It is unaccountable 
to us that though we lived in that village during many happy 
years of our youth, and though numbers must be yet alive 
who shared with us in the ill-assorted but characteristic mix- 
ture of the rural and the urban which thirty years ago 
rendered the spot in some respects an oasis in the great dry 
desert of London — yet the writers on the topography of the 
metropolis and its environs, from old ITaitland, in whose time 
we have reason to believe it had existed for some years, down 
to Peter Cunningham, E.S.A., the clever and indefatigable 
author of Mr. Murray's 'burly red-coated hand-book, appear 
one and all to have ignored its unobtrusive being. Of the 
Tothill Eields, which in very old times were part and parcel 
of a manor of Westminster belonging to John Haunsell, a 
chancellor of England, they afford us abundance of informa- 
tion. Here the wealthy chancellor entertained Xing Henry 
the Third and his retinue in large tents — his hospitality 
being so much bigger than his house, that one -half of his 
guests could not get within the walls. Here the "wagers 
of battel " were decided, by which, in feudal times, rival 
claims to privilege and property were settled by the arbitre- 
ment of war — when learned judges and royal potentates, as 



A DESERTED VILIAGE IN LONDON. 395 

well as the untaught populace, imagined that God would de- 
fend the right, and punish the wrong- doer, — always sup- 
posing that neither of the combatants, prior to entering the 
lists, had had recourse to "anie inchantement, sorcerie, or 
witchcraft, whereby the word of God might be inleased or 
diminished, and the devil's power encreased!" Either cham- 
pion was obliged to make solemn oath in the presence of the 
sovereign and the judges, that he had in nowise resorted to 
any such " parlous devices " to secure success, before the 
right divine was accorded him of hewing his adversary in 
pieces with the sword, if he was of gentle blood, or of 
knocking his brains out after having well battered his hide 
with a cudgel, if he happened to be a serf or villein. This 
point settled, and fair play established, to it they went, with 
full confidence in the sanction of an overlooking Providence, 
never doubting for a moment that the "author of peace and 
lover of concord" mingled in the fray, and ga^e the victory 
to the rightful claimant ! Here it was that, after the Par- 
liamentary victory of Worcester, which lost the miserable 
Charles his crown and his life, twelve hundred Scotch sol- 
diers who had been taken prisoners in the battle, and slaugh- 
tered subsequently in cold-blood, were buried in a hollow, 
and sixty- seven loads of soil, at the cost to the commonwealth 
of thirty shillings, laid upon their graves. It was here, too, 
in the seventeenth century, that dissatisfied gentlemen re- 
sorted in search of that peculiar kind of satisfaction, which 
honourable minds contrived to distil from such grim ingre- 
dients as gunpowder and lead and cold steel. As the place 
became gradually built over, it grew less convenient for these 
private rencontres. Gentlemen could not fight in comfort 
in a vulgar atmosphere, and such satisfactory meetings were 
transferred, as most of our readers know, to the back of 
Montague House, to Chalk Farm, north of the city, and to 
other places classical in the history of gentleman- slaughter. 

But our village, in our time, was a peaceful village ; and 
we must proceed, now that it is no more, to trace out, if we 



396 ctjuiosities of lokdon life. 

can, its past history, and to restore it to the comprehension of 
the reader, such at least as it was in our own youthful days. 
All that we know of its origin may be comprised in a very few 
words. It was about the middle of the seventeenth century, 
that one James Palmer, a bachelor of divinity, and a worthy 
and charitable man, founded an almshouse for the reception 
of twelve poor men and women, to each of whom he gave a 
perpetual annuity of six pounds and a chaldron of coals. In 
connection with the almshouses, he also erected a school for 
the gratuitous education of twenty boys, who were to be 
taught to " read, write, and account ;" and there was a 
master provided who had a salary of twelve pounds yearly, 
as well as a yearly chaldron of coals, and a new gown every 
other year. The founder further erected a chapel for the use 
of the pensioners and scholars, in which, during the latter 
years of his life, he himself preached to and prayed with 
them twice every day. The almshouse and the school, in 
which the aged were housed and fed, the young educated, 
and both had the gospel preached to them, were, as far as 
we have been able to ascertain, the nucleus around which 
" Palmer's Tillage" rose into being. In those days Tothill, 
or Toot-hill Side, was a gentle rise of verdant ground sloping 
pleasantly away towards the country, at a distance of some- 
thing less than a mile westward of the old abbey of West- 
minster. It is pleasant to imagine hedge-rows and country 
stiles, and winding walks through the fields between them, 
and the almshouses with the little chapel with its congrega- 
tion of two -and- thirty souls standing at first alone in the 
meadows, and to watch with "the mind's eye' the building 
of the first humble cottage beneath their walls, and then the 
gradual dotting of the greensward with the homes of the 
labouring poor, until the straggling irregular group of dwell- 
ings had clustered by degrees into something like a hamlet, 
and gained itself a name, and men began to call it " Palmer's 
Village" in honour of the founder of the charity around 
which it grew. But these are things we can only imagine, 



A DESERTED TILLAGE IN LONDOX. 397 

and for the truth or falsity of which no man now is in a condi- 
tion to vouch. Long before we knew it the advancing tide of 
brick and mortar had closed around the little village, and 
locked it up in the far- spreading embrace of the great Baby- 
lon, where, though hemmed in all around by crowded streets, 
dark narrow lanes and fetid courts, it yet retained many of 
the rural charms of its primal condition. It had yet a village 
green, though the narrow strip of dusty grass which justified 
the appellation was finally trodden out under our own eyes ; 
and on the green, every first of May, up rose, reared by invi- 
sible hands in the night, the village May-pole, round which 
we have seen the lads and lasses dancing to the music of their 
own laughter. It had an old-fashioned way-side inn, the 
Prince of Orange ; well we remember it, and its merry-faced 
and active little landlord, Wiggins, who never would be still, 
and never could be sad, but with a perennial laugh on his 
lips and a joke on his tongue, welcomed the weary traveller 
to cheap and wholesome refreshment. Then there was Mrs. 
"Wiggins who lived in the bar, and of whom nobody ever saw 
more than the head and shoulders — who was the living per- 
sonification of a " portrait of a lady" three-quarter size, with 
a back-ground of bottles and decanters, and strange old- 
fashioned glasses, and dark blue specimens of Lilliputian china 
brought from beyond sea, and that identical " brown jug" 
which " was once Toby Philpot," and a long-necked vial of 
some mysterious cordial of her own concoction, the contents 
of which were not to be bought with money, but freely 
gurgled forth when sorrow- struck poverty sought the hospi- 
tality of the Prince, or accident laid a poor neighbour on the 
shelf. It is to be supposed that Mrs. Wiggins did sometimes 
evacuate the bar, but during all the years of our residence in 
the village we never bad the good fortune to see her at full 
length — and sure we are that the bottles and the shelves 
must have cut but a melancholy figure, lacking the sunshine 
of her laughter-lighted countenance. The Prince of Orange 
was a model of a village inn, as village inns are found in rural 



398 CTTEIOSITIES OF LONDON LIFE. 

districts : it stood away from the road, retired modestly a few 
paces from the footpath: reared aloft on a strong squared 
beam, the Protestant Prince, baton in hand, swung backwards 
and forwards under the impulse of the wind, but being painted 
both sides alike on the pendulous board, he never turned his 
back on the public, and therein he was a faithful prototype of 
the landlord and landlady, who were ever to be found at their 
respective posts. Had he fallen down he would in all likeli- 
hood have pitched head foremost into the horse-trough, which, 
always full of pellucid water, ran along beneath him; but 
that was an event not to be thought of in a Protestant country, 
and of course it never happened. The house itself appeared 
at the first glance to be three parts roof, the long sloping grey 
tiles of which came down within seven feet or so to the ground, 
so that a man might reach them with his hand ; but beneath 
that homely crust the way-worn traveller found order and 
cleanliness, wholesome fare, the whitest linen, and ready and 
cheerful service — and all at an honest price. "We speak of 
the inn as it existed thirty years ago. What transformations 
it underwent before it finally vanished from the face of the 
earth we are in no condition to recount. 

'Next to the inn, if indeed it ought not to rank before it, 
the most remarkable feature in our metropolitan village was 
the shop. Of what goes to the constitution of a village shop, 
such as that was in our day, and such as multitudes of others 
are at the present hour in remote country districts, the Lon- 
doner born within the sound of Bow Bells has for the most 
part not the remotest idea. The village shop cannot keep its 
head above water unless it monopolise the commerce of the 
whole neighbourhood. It is grocer and tea-dealer, and 
stationer and bookseller, and draper and haberdasher, and 
chemist and druggist, and jeweller and ironmonger, and 
seedsman and toyman, and egg-merchant and butterman — 
and though it be neither butcher, nor baker, nor tailor, yet 
it kills a periodical pig and sells country pork, and retails 
fancy loaves, biscuits and bricks (crusty), and slop coats and 



A DESEETED TILLAGE IS LOSE-ON". 399 

trowsers and gaiters and overalls, and a hundred things 
besides ; in short, it does the work of Cheapside, Holborn, 
and the Strand, in a commercial way, all under one roof, for 
its own peculiar population. Such was the shop of our village 
in days of yore. "Who was its prosperous proprietor we can- 
not recal to mind, and we are loth in this veritable narrative 
to instal any apocryphal Mr. Jones or Mrs. Brown in a dignity 
to which they have no just claim. The shop itself still lives 
in our memory as the seat of much merchandise and more 
gossip, and there are yet a few pages of closely written fools- 
cap in our possession, which, under the denomination of bill- 
paper, we bought at its counter to serve as the record of some 
of our earliest lucubrations. "We do not pretend that this one 
was the only shop in the village ; it had a baker who was 
nothing but a baker, and a butcher who was nothing but a 
butcher, and both of them had shops of their own. Then 
there was the dress-maker who made a shop of her parlour 
window, where, having not yet learned to believe in gas, she 
stuck a single candle in the long winter nights to show the 
delicate beauties of a mob-cap and gophered collar ; and where 
she exhibited a notice, " Crimping done here," and displayed 
the identical crimping-machine, consisting of a couple of 
cogged brass cylinders, hollow for the reception of hot-irons, 
and turned by a small wooden handle affixed to the frame- 
work — with which the mysterious process was accomplished. 
She was a tall and almost incredibly thin personage, with no 
shoulders and sharp cheek bones, and a wandering eye ; she 
had the character of haughtiness with her customers, who 
were mostly servant maids. Mrs. "Wiggins, who had a good 
word as well as a cordial for everybody, once described her in 
our hearing as "a good soul enough, but very unbending;" 
which, by the way, was not a precisely exact description if 
taken literally — seeing that Miss Gandy, that was the dress- 
maker's name, did bend a little, only it was backwards and 
not forwards ; in aspiring to the character of an upright 
woman she had attained to that and something beyond it. 



400 CUEIOSITIES OP LONDON LIFE. 

Her familiar friends called her Mrs. Gandy ; the implied Hr. 
G. was however nothing more than a complimentary fiction ; 
the dress-maker had never married, but she had passed the 
uncertain limit of a u certain age," and the matrimonial 
appellative was dne to her mature appearance, and perhaps, 
who knows ? was a balm to her feelings. 

Then there was the village tailor, a sharp-nosed, fiery-eyed 
man of unknown proportions, seeing that we never beheld him 
elsewhere than at his open window, where he sat all day long, 
with a couple of pale-faced urchins at his side, upon a board 
level with the sill, cross-legged like a Turk, and stitching with 
his needle or singeing with his goose from one year's end to the 
other. ^Te don't know how it came to pass, whether it was 
owing to the ferocious expression upon the man's face, or what 
— but certain it is that we identified him in imagination, from 
the very first, with the cruel tailor of Delhi, who stuck his 
needle into the elephant's trunk, and got a shower-bath of 
dirty water for his pains. He was the very man to have done 
such a thing, and we felt certain that if at any time an ele- 
phant out for a walk had happened to wander that way, and 
to have turned an inquiring snout into Eosser' s open window, 
Eosser would have stuck his needle in it, as sure as fate : it 
wasn't in him to have helped it. So we never think of the 
resentful elephant of Delhi without thinking, too, of Eosser 
and his two pale-faced apprentices, and that shining sleeve- 
board and hot- smelling goose, and the dreadiul contortions of 
countenance which their master used to exhibit when engaged 
in the ticklish experiment of covering a blind button with a 
jacket of stiff corduroy. 

As we stand gazing in at the tailor's open window we hear, 
with memory's ear, the metallic sound of the broad hammer 
of the blacksmith. "The brawny blacksmith bangs broad 
bars for bread" just round the corner: he is a short, sturdy 
fellow, and, like most members of his trade, strong and of a 
massive build, with a beard which has been growing ever 
since last Saturday night, and a pair of shaggy eye-brows, 



A DESEETED YILIAGE EN" LONDON. 401 

beneath, which a couple of fat eyes wink and glimmer like 
sparks from his forge. He can hammer out a horse-shoe in, 
we forget exactly how many minutes, or fractions of a minute ; 
and he is known through all "Westminster among the hackney- 
coachmen and grooms, as a cheap, safe, and expeditious hand, 
at a horse's foot. He is strong enough, as the village barber 
says, to make a show of, and can bend a crown piece and 
straighten it again, with his fingers ; and could knock your 
life out with a blow of his fist if he chose, only he doesn't 
choose anything of the sort, being tender-hearted, and fond 
of children and pet birds, and lop-eared rabbits, and every- 
thing or anything that is weak and helpless. You should see 
him lay aside his work and forge a new tooth for a peg-top, 
to pacify a whimpering boy, the child of a neighbour, who 
has disabled his toy by rough usage, and note how tenderly 
with his hard hands he wipes away the tears from the child's 
face, ere he sends him off exulting to his playfellows. It is 
one of nature's compensations, that such formidable Samsons 
as our village blacksmith are rarely found without some touch 
of tenderness in tbeir composition, which tames their wild 
strength, even when, from the untoward circumstances of 
their life, the influence of education is not brought to bear 
upon them. Our blacksmith, though he can barely read a 
chapter in fhe Testament, and keeps all his accounts with a 
piece of chalk and the back of his smithy door, is a practical 
musician, and you may hear him of a Sunday afternoon ham- 
mering out upon a set of pendent bells, the psalm tunes he has 
heard at Westminster Abbey in the morning ; and you will 
hear too, if you listen long, that he has a family around him 
who are chiming in with very faint and juvenile voices, which 
gladden his heart as he enjoys his weekly holiday. 

"We have mentioned the barber. Our barber is, however, 
not exactly a barber — not to the manner born, or bred. He 
is an old soldier with a pension of twelve pounds a year, who 
has resigned the sword and assumed the razor. He rarely 
shaves except on a Saturday, and then, as he remarks, he 



402 CURIOSITIES OF LO^DOK" LIFE. 

reaps a very sandy crop, and is obliged to cultivate a peculiar 
kind of razor to reap it at all. The rest of his time he em- 
ploys in strop-making, with which he does, it is said, a good- 
stroke of business. He travels the city every Monday, 
carrying his wares in a bag, which he generally contrives to 
bring home empty in his pocket. He is hand and glove with 
the Wigginses, so he is in fact with everybody, and executes 
all their commissions in town ; and it is observed that he 
always calls upon Miss Gandy on the morning of the day 
when he sets forth on his weekly tour. "What is the nature 
of the business that he transacts for her, nobody knows : and 
he is never heard to breathe a syllable about it himself, which, 
by the way, is a sure sign that he is not a real barber. 

Our village — the reader will remember we are carried back 
in spirit thirty years — our village has no doctor, no apothe- 
cary, no surgeon, though it is not wanting in patients, and, 
indeed, is a favourite resort of poor invalids and convalescents 
who cannot afford a better. Its doctor and surgeon and 
apothecary, we are bound to confess, is Westminster Hospital,* 
which stands not very far from the western boundary of the 
village, and within an easy walk for the out-patients. The 
hospital is one source of Wiggins' s prosperity; he serves the 
daily beer ordered for the patients, and, at dinner-time and 
supper-time, is busy as a bee in filling a monstrous travelling- 
can, which he wheels himself to the hospital door, when it is 
lifted into the hall, and the nurses being in attendance, they 
are served in rotation. The patients receive, of course, what 
is prescribed for them by the medical men, and the house- 
hold staff have what is allotted by the established dietary. 
It is reckoned an honour to serve the hospital, and it is a 
profit to the publican in more ways than one, inasmuch as 
that beverage which medical practitioners prescribe for their 
patients may be justly regarded by the public as what it pro- 
fesses to be — the genuine brewst of malt and hops. On a 

* Westminster Hospital removed to the new building in Broad 
Sanctuary, at the eastern end of Tothill-street, in 1833. 



A DESERTED TILLAGE IN LONDON. 403 

fine summer's evening the out-patients of the hospital, not a 
few of whom have temporary lodgings in the village, may be 
seen sunning themselves at their doors, watching, with smiles 
on their wan faces, the children at play, and inhaling the 
fresh breeze that blows at sundown after the heat of the day. 
"When the nurses have a holiday, they love to spend an hour 
in a visit to the village, and a gossip with their old proteges, 
the convalescent patients, with whom they exchange news of 
the world within and the world without the hospital. 

Our village, in appearance, does not much resemble the 
rest of the brick and mortar paradise of London. Properly 
speaking, there are no regular streets in it; rows of houses, 
chiefly cottages, there are, but they do not stand face to face, 
like the two sides of a street proper — but face to back, like 
ranks of soldiers in a regiment ; and it is thought that, like a 
regiment, they will be marched off the ground some day. 
There are little odd- shaped and triangular patches of ground 
here and there, which might perhaps, by a stretch of courtesy, 
be called streets; but nobody calls them streets — they are 
Palmer's Tillage, all of them, and nothing else — the post- 
master and the postman lump them all together, and the latter 
has to learn the whereabouts of each inhabitant, or if he 
can't find him to leave the letter at the Prince of Orange, 
where the correspondent will be sure to get it when he comes 
for his supper-beer. Most of the ground not required for 
traffic — and there is not very much of that — is laid out in 
gardens, which, though they ha^e a rather dusty hue, abound 
in summer-time with the old English cottage flowers, the 
hollyhock, the polyanthus, the bloody- warrior, the cabbage- 
rose, the marigold, the sun-flower, all intermingled with flat 
beds of onions and vistas of kidney-beans and scarlet-runners. 
After a shower, when the rain has washed the dust off them, 
they look uncommonly bright and gay, and then there is a 
grateful perfume in the air not to be encountered in any other 
district in London, broad as it is. The gardens are well 
railed off, securely though in a homely way ; if they were 



404 CTEIOSITIES OP LOITDON LITE. 

not they would soon cease to be gardens, because the natives 
of our village are a good many of them descendants of certain 
patriarch goats, and pigs, and geese, and ducks, and bantam 
fowls, who came in vrith the early settlers, when there was 
plenty of grass laud in the neighbourhood for their accommo- 
dation. From time immemorial their sires were free of the 
village, and though the several races have considerablv dimin- 
ished of late vears, there are vet enough of them remaining 
to give the locality something like a farmirg aspect. The 
ducks yet contrive to pick up a living, partly helped by the 
remains of evervboclv's dinner which are dailv thrown out to 
them, and partly by the care of the duckweed merchant, who 
makes his periodical rounds; it is they and the geese, we 
suspect, who have gradually eaten up the best part of the 
village green, of which the last straggling roots of grass are 
dying out. There is an old Billy goat, with a long beard, 
which ought to be grey, though it isn't, who is the progenitor 
of half the guardian goats in London. Ve say guardian 
goats, because there exists a superstition among the ostlers, 
grooms, and stable-keepers in London, by which goats of all 
grades enjoy protection and good treatment; it is supposed 
that the presence of a goat in a stable, or in that concatena- 
tion of stables called a mews, secures all the horses there 
stabled from the attacks of certain diseases to which they 
would otherwise be liable. Hence Billy or Xanny is a pet in 
the stable-vard, and is so well fed and well used that he or 
she is familiar with all and afraid of nobody. Perhaps this 
superstition might be traced back to the old Mosaic ceremonial 
of the scape-goat of the wilderness — who can tell? "We 
cannot say much in favour of the pigs; they are voted a nui- 
sance, and seem to be conscious that thev are not in good 
odour; but they are learned in their way, and know the map 
of Westminster as well as the postman. They invade Petty 
Prance, which is not half a mile off, every morning, and 
amidst the ineffable filth of that indescribably filthy district 
they grout and grunt and snunle through the livelong day. 



A DESEHTED VILLAGE IN LONDON. 405 

"We have met the village pig before now as far away as the 
Eroad Sanctuary, but we never knew of his losing his way, or 
failing to return at night to his supper and his sty. We must 
not omit all mention of the village cow ; she is the last of 
her race, and always reminds us, by her melancholy face, of 
poor Io, who was vaccinated by Jupiter from fear of Juno's 
jealousy. She wanders about the village, turning a woe- 
begone countenance and lack-lustre eye this way and that in 
search of her lost calf; and to the tune of " New Milk from 
the Cow," bellowed in alt by Jerry Dings her owner, parts 
with the precious beverage, a ha'porth at a time, to the lovers 
of the genuine article. Poor thing ! she is an impostor after 
ail ; the milk she gives is sheer sky-blue, and would no more 
yield a dish of cream than the veriest chalk and water con- 
cocted in the Seven Dials. Eut she cannot help it. She has 
never grazed a green field since her horns first budded ; the 
cud she chews is composed of brewers' grains and musty 
hay, instead of the dewy daisied sward or croppings from the 
cowslip bank. She totters on her feet as she drags on her 
daily rounds, and is already resigned to inexorable fate, which, 
in the shape of a sausage-machine, is " looming in the distance." 
Eut we must awake up from the visions of the past. The 
remorseless noiv puts its extinguisher upon these old recol- 
lections, and compels us, however unwilling, to record the 
decline and fall of what is now but an empire of dreams. 
The decline of Palmer's Tillage may date, if we mistake not, 
from the invention of cabs, which some few years before the 
hospital was removed to its new site, began to overrun the 
metropolis. The cabs and their struggling proprietors pitched, 
as if by instinct, upon the village and its patches of enclos- 
able land, and by degrees monopolised a good part of the 
territory. Shed-built stables rose on the sites of the pleasant 
gardens — dung-heaps banished the bloom and the fragrance 
of the flowers — broken-kneed, broken-winded, glandered, 
blind, and spavined hacks supplanted the pigs and the poultry. 
With the cabs of course came cabmen, and with the cabmen 



406 CURIOSITIES OF LONDON liee. 

equally of course came late hours aud midnight riot, and gin- 
drinking and squabbling. Then the hospital moved away, 
and the Prince of Orange lost his best customer ; the village 
shop followed in its wake, and was transformed into a chemist 
and druggist's. Poor Miss Gaudy took fright at the onset of 
the Jehus, and carried off her crimping machine to a quiet 
retreat in Pimlico. We ourselves stood it out as long as we 
could; and indeed Palmer's Tillage had been swallowed up 
and buried alive in unmitigated "Westminster — the filth, 
moral and material, of the dirty world around had got posses- 
sion of its sacred precincts, before we could find heart, like 
Dick Dowlas, to pack up our linen in a blue-and- white pocket 
handkerchief, and bid a final farewell to the pleasant home of 
our youth — at length a pleasant home no longer. 

Since then we have wandered far and wide about the world, 
and done and suffered many things, about which we are not 
going to say anything here ; and time has thinned our flowing 
hair, and grizzled what is left of it ; and we have forgotten 
many things which it might have been as well to have remem- 
bered — but we have never forgotten, we could not forget, the 
old village. The other day — "last Wednesday was a week," 
as Boniface says, one of those pensive events which sometimes 
occur in the lives of all of us, the particulars of which we 
need not relate, sent us impromptu on an exploring expedition 
to see what had become of Palmer's Tillage. The overland 
route from merry Islington, where it is our lot to dwell, is 
easily practicable by means of the " Favourite" omnibus, 
which, for the modest charge of four-pence, takes you up at 
Highbury, and drops you, after a wholesome shaking of four 
or five miles, within the shadow of Westminster Abbey, from 
whence a walk of twenty minutes takes you to the site of the 
subject of our paper. It was not without a gush of tender- 
ness, and a twitching at the heart and the eyelids, that leaving 
the Abbey behind us, we plunged into the narrow, dirty throat 
of Tothill-street, where Southerne, the author of "Isabella" 
once dwelt, in a house yet standing — and where yet stands, 



A DESERTED VILLAGE IN LOXDOX. 407 

too, the "Cock public -house," which stood while the Abbey 
was re-building by Henry the Third — and proceeded on our 
way towards the once well-known spot. We might have 
saved ourselves the trouble and the pain. Arrived at the 
place where it ought to have been, not a vestige of it could 
we trace, but in its stead there ran a broad new road sheer 
through the heart of it, which had pushed the whole village 
out of its way in its unceremonious advance. The new road 
is almost upon a level with the roofs of the old cottages, which 
are thrown down and their sites converted into building:- 
ground, which, as everybody knows, is of all wildernesses the 
most desolate and forbidding. 

"Pa'mer's Willidge," said a sallow-faced Westminsterian 
youth of whom we made inquiry ; " there ain't no sich place 
as I knows on." And we were obliged to have recourse to a 
reverend elder who sat at the door of a marine store in a neigh- 
bouring street. 

" Palmer's Tillage," said he, " why, your honour's the fust 
as has axed me that question for many a year ; rek'let it ? to 
be sure I do, man and boy fifty year and more. Why, bless 
your 'art, I don't think there's a bit on it left stannin'. Let 
me see ; yes, there is though. You see them boords yander 
over the brick wall — that's a bit on it; but 'taint much you'll 
say; but you won't find no more on it, I reckon. 'Tis curous 
that you should ax arter it though." 

" And what have they done with the Prince of Orange?" 

"There ain't a lath on it left — all gone as clean as a whistle; 
but they're a buildin' a new un, a slap-up house to match wi' 
the new neighbourhood as is to be." 

" And Mr. Wiggins — what is become of him ?" 

" There you has me hard ! Wiggins didn't do kindly like, 
arter his wife's death (she were a goodish soul, she were, a 
spry little ooman) ; and he gived up the Prince, and they do 
say he went to Jarsejj and died there ; but I can't tell'ee for 
sartin." 

" One question more — What became of the blacksmith ?" 



408 CURIOSITIES OP LOXEOX LIFE. 

" What— that used to play the bells ?" 

"The same." 

" Well, he can play the bells all day if he likes now. "Why, 
he made a fortune out o' railway carriage buffers, or suth'n o' 
the sort, and he's quite a gemman now. I seen hini four year 
agone a drivin' in a open carriage wi' a pair o' grey ponies 
over Westminster Bridge. He's all right anyhow, / should 
think.'' 

And this was all the information we could obtain — the whole 
and sole record of the vanished Tillage, of which not a trace 
beyond a few old walls, and rusty, mildewed hoardings re- 
mained. We strolled musingly about the deserted spot, over 
the piles of irregular earth and among the mounds of broken 
bricks and dried mortar ; occupied the while in the anxious 
attempt to connect any, the slightest, vestige yet on the ground 
with our cherished associations of the past. It was not to be 
done. The home of some of our happiest years had been 
blotted out of the world ; and its very memory must soon pass 
away from the earth, seeing that it lives in the recollections of 
few who care to remember it, and that no local historian has 
condescended to allot it a place in its pages. 

This brief sketch will soon be all that survives of Palmer's 
Tillage ; and perhaps it may be allowed to serve at once for 
its history and its funeral oration. 



THE END. 



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